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THE LITTLE CHRONICLE 
OF MAGDALENA BACH 











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Sebastian Bach at F Youre 


fe 72 the picture by TSE. Rosenthal 
Copyright. Photograph Lschee Gesellschaft 


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THE 
LITTLE CHRONICLE 
of 


MAGDALENA BACH 


BY 
ESTHER MEYNELL 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1925 








- . ‘es 
ea COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY DOUBLI 
& COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED ST. 


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COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN 


| FIRST EDITION 


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TO ALL WHO LOVE 
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 











PART | 


IN my solitude I had a visit this day which has cheered my 
heart. Caspar Burgholt, that old and favourite pupil of my 
beloved Sebastian, sought me out and came to visit me 
—and, indeed, it needed some seeking to discover Dame 
Bach in her seclusion of poverty, so quickly are forgotten 
our more prosperous days. We had much of which to 
speak. He told me of his modest successes, of his wife 
and the young children, but most of all we talked of the 
one who is dead—of his master and my husband. After 
we had recalled many things of those wonderful years, 
Caspar said a word which gives a meaning to my present 
hidden existence: ‘‘Write,’ he said, ‘‘write a little 
chronicle of that great man. You knew him as no one else 
knew him, write all that you remember—and I do not 
suppose your faithful heart has forgotten much—of his 
words, his looks, his life, his music. People neglect his 
memory now, but not always will he be forgotten, he is 
too great for oblivion, and some day posterity will thank 
you for what you shall write.” 

Those were Caspar’s words, and so soon as he had left 
me I hastened to write them down, for I perceive that 
whether it is true or not what he says about posterity, 
there will be much comfort to me in my loneliness in 
following his advice. It should be good counsel, for he 
knew Sebastian so well, was so truly devoted to him (as 
indeed all his pupils were who were old enough to under- 


ss 


PART ONE 


stand his great nature—unlike those tiresome boys of the 
Thomas Schule, who were such a plague to him). 

I have so little left that belonged to Sebastian, as all 
the valuable things had to be sold and divided among so 
many. How bitterly I regretted I could not even keep that 
gold and agate snuff-box of which he was so fond, which 
I had so often seen in his hands, so often filled for him. 
But it was adjudged too valuable even for his widow to 
keep, and must be sold and the money divided among us. 
But if I have little left to remind me of him it is perhaps 
because the good God knows there is small need—I am 
in no danger of forgetting him with all this priceless store 
of memories in my heart. Poor as I am, and forgotten, 
living on the charity of the town of Leipzig, and old—I 
was yesterday fifty-seven years old, only eight years 
younger than he was when he died—I would not be other 
than I am now, if it was at the cost of never having known 
him, never having been his wife. I count but two women 
in Thuringia completely fortunate—his cousin, Maria 
Barbara Bach, who was his first wife, and myself, his 
second one. He loved us both—but I think perhaps he 
loved me the most dearly, and he certainly loved me 
longest, by the kindness of Providence. But a bare thirteen 
years was he married to Maria Barbara, and she, poor 
creature, died when he was absent on one of his journeys 
with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Céthen. His second son, 
Emanuel, young as he was at the time, has never forgotten 
his father’s grief when he returned to find his small 
children motherless, his wife, whom he had left so well 
and happy, dead and laid in the grave. Poor Barbara 
Bach, that she had to die and leave him, without even a 
farewell word or embrace! 

The first time I saw him!—how the years drop away, 


[4] 


PART ONE 


and it comes back so clear and sharp tome. My father, 
who out of his goodness would sometimes take me with 
him on his occasional journeys, especially if there was any 
matter of music involved, knowing my love for that 
art of Heaven, took me with him when he went to Ham- 
burg in the winter of 1720 to visit my great-uncle and 
aunt. There was a very noble Organ in St. Katharine’s 
Church at Hamburg, it had four manuals and pedal, and 
I heard much talk of it among my father’s musical friends. 
The second day I was in Hamburg [ had been out market- 
ing for my great-aunt, and as I passed St. Katharine’s on 
my way back I was minded to slip in and just look at this 
Organ. AsI pushed open the door I heard that somebody 
was playing, and it seemed to me very wonderful music 
was coming from within, as though one of the angels was 
seated at that keyboard. So I stole in very quietly and 
stayed listening. I stood looking up at the Organ in the 
west gallery, with its great pipes soaring to the roof, and 
all its beautiful carvings and decorations, but the organist 
was hidden from my sight. Ido not know quite how long 
I may have stood there in the empty church, with no 
sense but hearing, as though I had taken root upon the 
stones—I was so smitten from all thought of time by this 
music that even when it suddenly ceased on a glorious 
group of chords which filled the air with great vibrations, 
I still stood gazing upwards, hoping that from those pipes 
would issue more music. Instead, the organist—Sebastian 
himself—came forth to the Organ balcony to the Organ 
stairs, and his attention suddenly beheld me gazing up- 
wards. Fora moment I looked up at him, too startled by 
his sudden appearance to move. I think, after that music, 
I had half expected to see some great angel, if I saw any- 
one, notaman. Then a trembling took me suddenly. I 


ee 


PART ONE 


picked up my cloak, which had fallen to the floor, and ran 
out of the church in a kind of panic. When I found myself 
at a safe distance I began to wonder at my own exceeding 
folly—for even my great-aunt, who was very strict, could 
surely have found nothing unmaidenly in entering a 
church in order that I might listen to the Organ. 

I had no idea who he was, but on telling my father of 
this episode at supper that night—with the look and the 
trembling and the running away, I must confess, omitted 
—he at once exclaimed, “‘Why, of course, that must have 
been the Duke of Céthen’s Capellmeister, Johann Sebas- 
tian Bach. He is to play the St. Katharine’s Organ to- 
morrow to Herr Reinken, and I and some others are 
going to hear him. I will tell him how my little daughter 
admires his music. Perhaps, if he hears her sing, the 
small nightingale that she is, he may like her voice well 
enough to write a song for her.” 

I begged him, with uncomfortable blushes (for he did 
not know quite all the story) to say nothing at all about 
me to the Capellmeister, but the more I blushed the more 
amused he was, and declared I must have lost my heart 
to the buttons on the Capellmeister’s coat back, as he did 
not suppose I could have seen his countenance if he was 
at the Organ, and in any case he had not heard that Herr 
Bach was noted for his good looks. | 

I had the wish to hear him play again the next day, but 
it could not be gratified, as my poor aunt was so afflicted 
on that occasion with the quartain ague so it was not fit 
to leave her. And with my desire to go and hear him 
again was a curious shrinking and fear of seeing him—I 
suppose a kind of premonition of the tremendous things 
he was tomean tome. | 

But my father went to St. Katharine’s and when he 


[6] 


PART ONE 


came back I eagerly questioned him. He was overcome 
with admiration—he had never heard such Organ-playing 
in his life and never expected to hear such again, unless it 
were from the same hands. We all sat round and listened 
to his account. The Capellmeister played for over two 
hours, and for a fourth of that time he improvised on the 
chorale, ‘‘By the waters of Babylon,” with the most mar- 
vellous pedal passages—‘‘ Double pedal,” said my father, 
“‘and played as easily as one could play a scale with one 
hand.” He also played a Fantasia and Fugue in G minor 
he had just recently composed, a thing of great brilliance 
and beauty. I, of course, did not hear it on this occasion, 
but I heard him play it at many later times and always had 
a particular partiality for it—the opening of the Fugue 
especially always pleased me, it is so gay and exhilarating. 
When Sebastian had finished his wonderful performance, 
Herr Reinken—who for so long had been the organist at 
St. Katharine’s, who was so old, being ninety-seven, and 
who was well-known to be jealous and proud of his own 
powers—to the utter astonishment of those present, came 
up to the Capellmeister Bach and taking his hand raised 
it to his lips, saying, ‘“‘I salute the hands of genius—I 
thought this art of Organ-playing would die with me, 
but I perceive it still lives in you.” 

One of the things that deeply impressed my father in 
Herr Bach’s Organ-playing was his stillness and ease— 
though his feet would fly up and down the pedal-board 
as though they had wings, he never seemed to move his 
body, never twisted himself about as many organists do. 
It was the perfection that looks simple and shows no 
effort. 

And then imagine what followed—we heard the com- 
plete story later on, after we had returned home, from my 


ead 


PART ONE 


great-uncle, who, a musician himself, had been much 
interested in Sebastian on this occasion. The organist of 
St. James’s Church in Hamburg, which had a very great 
and fine Organ, was just dead, and Sebastian, attracted by 
the idea of having such an Organ at his disposal and being 
in a position to compose church-music (which always 
meant so much to him, and while with the Duke of Céthen 
his work was principally chamber-music), offered himself 
for the post. But, instead of rejoicing at their good fortune 
in obtaining the greatest organist in the Fatherland, the 
committee elected a person called Joachim Heitmann, of 
no musical distinction, because he made them a present 
of four thousand marks—‘‘He could prelude better with 
thalers than with his fingers,” said my indignant uncle. 
But Pastor Neumeister at least was so angry at this 
transaction that he left the committee, and in reference to 
it in a sermon he said these scathing words, “I believe 
quite certainly that if one of the angels of Bethlehem, who 
played divinely, came from Heaven and wished to be 
organist of St. James’s Church, if he had no money he 
would have nothing to do but to fly away.” 

So Capellmeister Bach did not go to Hamburg. 

And now I come to my first meeting with him, which 
was in the year after I first saw and heard him. My father 
being Court Trumpeter at Weissenfels, we constantly had a 
coming and going of muscians in our house. He was also 
frequently at Céthen, where Sebastian was Capellmeister, 
and it so happened that I had occasionally sung at the 
court concerts there, but each time Sebastian had been 
absent, once owing to an illness and once on a journey, 
to my secret disappointment, as I had the wish to see 
again and perhaps speak with this remarkable musician. 

On a certain morning—a very fair and spring-like 


[8] 


PART ONE 


morning, as I well remember—I had been out, and on my 
return was going straight into the family room to stick 
some green boughs in a beau-pot before the stove, when 
my mother laid her hand on my arm: “Wait a little, 
Magdalena,” she said, “‘thy Father is engaged on some 
business with Capellmeister Bach, and I do not think he 
requires thy presence.” 

My foolish heart began thumping very suddenly. 
Master Bach! and I had only seen him once, though 
much I had heard of him in the interval, and much I 
wanted to see him again. I was afraid at once lest my 
Father should call me and should not call mein. Iwas on 
the point of running to my bed-chamber to put on a 
fresh neck-ribbon—I had a blue one that I thought 
became me—when my father opened the door, put his 
head out and said, ‘‘Has Magdalena returned, Mother?” 
Then he saw me, “Come here, child, Master Bach would 
spare a moment to hear thy voice.” 

So I went into the room and stood before him. I was 
so abashed I could hardly look up, and I wondered if by 
any chance he would recognize me, and hoped he would 
not, for St. Katharine’s had been but dim. But he told 
me afterwards that he did instantly know me. He struck 
me at once as being a big man, in person I mean, and yet he 
wasnot exceptionally so, only a little taller than my father. 
But there was something about him which gave a great 
impression of strength—a sort of rock-like quality—and 
he always seemed to stand out among other people as if he 
were bigger physically, when really it was morally and in 
his mind he was so much bigger. Caspar told me he always 
had the same impression of physical as well as mental big- 
ness. It was not what he said, for he was quiet and rather 
grave, not much given to talking, except with his intimates. 


[9] 


PART ONE 


As for me, I was dumb enough. I made him a courtesy 
and did not open my mouth till he put some music on the 
clavier, sat down himself at the instrument and asked me 
tosing the aria. Happily, when I sing 1 am not afraid, and 
when I had finished my father cried, ‘‘Good!” with real 
pleasure in his face. Master Bach just looked at me very 
steadily for a moment and said, ‘Thy voice is pure, and 
thou canst sing.”’ And I—I wanted to say ‘‘ And how thou 
canst play!” but I did not dare. It was unbelievable what 
he made of that simple accompaniment, which I had 
played often myself. His way of holding his hands, of 
using his thumbs, his fingering, all were different. But I 
could not say anything at all, [wasinsuchastir. Ilonged 
to run away, as I had run from the church, but I stood 
rooted and dumb by the side of the clavier, like a child. I 
felt absurdly childish before that man, and yet a big 
thing had happened to me which does not happen to 
children—happened all in a short space. God had given 
me a soul open to music, and that being so it was, of 
course, impossible that having heard Sebastian Bach play 
I should care for any other man in this world. And in his 
mind, too, had I but known it, he said to himself, “I 
shall marry that maiden.” It was as well that I was 
willing, for he always had an extraordinary way of getting 
that to which he set his mind. ‘There were occasions, I 
confess, in later years when I almost thought him obstinate. 

I would be exact in my description of him at this time 
when I first really saw and spoke with him, because the 
impression is still so very clear to me, undimmed by years 
of the closest intimacy and even by the memory of his 
dear face with closed eyes as I last saw it in this world. 
Now I will not claim that he was handsome—few of the 
Bachs are that—but he had a countenance that set forth 


[ ro | 


PART ONE 


the power of his mind. His most notable features were his 
massive forehead, and his eyes, with the marked eyebrows 
drawn into the half-frown of thought. His eyes, when I 
first knew him, were large (later, as he grew older, with 
suffering and overmuch use they narrowed and the lids 
drooped more over them), with an intense and concen- 
trated inward gaze that was very notable. They were 
listening eyes, and had at times a veiled and mystic look. 
His mouth was big and mobile, generous, and with laughter 
at its corners; his jaw large and square, to balance his 
forehead. No one could look at him and not look again, 
for there was something about him that was remarkable 
and that made itself felt, unconscious as he was of it. One 
of the things that from the first so impressed me was the 
mixture of greatness and humility in him—he knew his 
own powers, he was too good a musician not to do so, but 
in so far as it was himself he thought little of it, the only 
thing he honoured was music, and he cherished the belief 
that application and hard work and devotion to music 
would bring anyone to where he stood himself. How often 
have I heard him say—sometimes when I peeped into the 
room where he would be standing by the clavier giving a 
lesson to one of his pupils, “If you work as hard as I do, 
you will be able to play as wellasI do.” One of his Organ 
pupils, who loved him and knew how [I liked to hear any 
of his sayings, came to me one day very. pleased after a 
lesson at the Organ, and told me that when his lesson was 
finished Sebastian had himself taken his seat at the Organ- 
stool and played very gloriously, and when the pupil ex- 
pressed his admiration turned upon him with almost an 
air of vexation, saying, “‘ There is nothing wonderful about 
it. You merely strike the right note at the right moment 
and the Organ does the rest.’”’ And we two had a happy 


[1 | 


PART ONE 


laugh together over this, for I by that time knew enough 
of the Organ’s difficulties to appreciate that “merely 
striking the right note’”—when you have to do it with 
your hands and feet together—for I persuaded Sebastian, 
after we were married, to give me some Organ lessons, 
though he said it was hardly an instrument for a woman. 
But I desired to know something about it, so that I could 
understand his Organ music and Organ-playing a little 
better. 

In the late summer of 1721, when his first wife had been 
dead over a year, Sebastian asked me of my father in 
marriage. I had not seen him often, though I had on one 
or two occasions sung at the court concerts at Céthen, for 
which he was responsible, but I had thought about him 
much—perhaps more than was quite what my dear 
mother would have approved. But indeed I could not 
help it, and though it was far beyond my deserts to hope 
that he would wish me to be his wife, he made so deep an 
impression on me from the very first that I knew I would 
never willingly marry any other man. My honoured 
parents were very content, though they thought it their 
duty to point out to me that he was fifteen years older 
than I was and had four children living—three were dead, 
poor little ones—to whom I would have to be a mother. 
When they understood from my stumbling words, my 
blushes and tears—I could not help crying a little, I was 
so happy—that I was willing, they sent me in to him 
where he was waiting for me in another room. I think he 
was not in much uncertainty as to my answer, I think his 
penetrating eyes had read my heart, though it was not 
much he had said to me before he spoke to my parents, 
and I from my first meeting with him had been smitten 
with a sort of dumbness. The sight of him always made 


[ 12 ] 


PART ONE 


my heart so beat that speech was difficult. There he stood 
by the window: he turned as I opened the door and took 
two swift steps towards me, “Magdalena, my dear one, 
thou knowest my wish? thy parents approve—wilt thou 
be my wife?” I said, ‘Oh, yes, thank thee very much,” 
and burst into tears—which I fear was very indecorous— 
but they were tears of utter bliss and gratitude to God and 
to Sebastian. When he put his arms about me I could not 
help thinking of a chorale of Luther’s we often sang 
round the fire on winter nights, “Eine feste Burg”—for 
a “‘strong tower” Sebastian always was to me from the 
day of our marriage. 

My betrothal was a very joyful occasion, for I could 
see how proud my dear parents were that their daughter 
should marry so respectable and distinguished a musician, 
one, moreover, so high in the favour of his Prince. Duke © 
Leopold took the kindest notice of me, and graciously told 
me that in marrying his Capellmeister I was marrying a 
man whose name would always be honoured where music 
was loved. He also complimented me on the happy fact 
that I could sing the songs my future husband wrote. His 
condescension, and I may say friendship, towards Sebas- 
tian is shown by the fact that the Prince was godfather to 
the last child of his first marriage, and when he went 
travelling he would not be content unless he carried his 
Capellmeister with him—indeed, it was on his return from 
one of these journeys that Sebastian found poor Maria 
Barbara dead and buried, as I have said before. 

Sebastian loved quiet Céthen, and at this time had no 
thought but that he and I would spend the rest of our 
lives there, in the service of that good Prince who was so 
truly devoted to music. Before our marriage took place, 
Sebastian and I stood godparents in the Cathedral of 


[ 13 J 


PART ONE 


Coéthen to the child of Christian Halen, the Prince’s 
cellar-clerk. It is a day I will always remember, for it was 
the first time I had been publicly associated with my 
betrothed, and my laced blue gown was pretty, and I felt 
that he was pleased with me—from that time onwards to 
his death one approving word or look from him meant 
more to me than anything the rest of the world could do 
or say—and his young children stood round us and I felt 
then that we were a family united. It was for that he cared 
—his wife, his children, his home. After the travels he 
had made on foot in his youth to hear famous organists 
and to play on different Organs, and his official journeys 
with his Prince—it was on these journeys that he wrote 
so many of those little preludes and fugues he called “The 
Well-Tempered Clavichord,” which to me always seem 
so full of beautiful music, though he wrote them princi- 
pally as practice pieces for his pupils—he settled down to 
a quiet and retired lifeat home. All the years we lived at 
Leipzig he hardly stirred out of it—his work, day by day, 
at the Thomas Schule and the church, the musical con- 
certs he conducted, his composing, his -home, satisfied 
him. He never travelled about to be admired, to make a 
sensation, like some other musicians who come from not 
so far away. And yet, if God gave genius to any man he 
gave it to Sebastian Bach, though I know there are few 
alive now, save some of his old pupils, who think so or 
remember him and his music. 

But I have gone too far on in the years that were ahead 
of us. We were betrothed in September 1721, and in 
December our wedding took place in Sebastian’s house, 
so that I was married in the house that was to be my home. 
My wedding wreath was bestowed upon me by Sebas- 
tian’s gracious Prince, who took a particular interest in 


[ 14 ] 


PART ONE 


our wedding, as he himself was to be married only a week 
later to a fair princess of Anhalt-Bernburg. 

How kind Sebastian was to me that day, how happy I 
was, in a kind of blissful dream we may experience but 
once in this world. They say a maiden’s wedding day 
should be the happiest of her life, and certainly no maid 
could have been so happy as I was, but then who ever had 
such a husband as Sebastian Bach? After my marriage I 
had no life but his. I felt like a little stream absorbed in 
the ocean—enveloped, sustained, enfolded, in a life larger 
and deeper than my own could ever be. Year by year, as 
I lived with him so closely, I grew to understand his 
greatness more fully—he was so far beyond me that at 
times I felt frightened, but I did understand him because 
I loved him. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law,” as he 
was fond of quoting from that German Bible of our great 
Luther’s, which he knew so well and read so often—truly 
could he say with Luther, “There are few trees in that gar- 
den which I have not shaken for fruit’’—sitting in his black 
leathern armchair by the hearth in winter, by the window 
insummer. Ah me! what memories come back to my heart! 

And for me, when we were married he wrote this song 
—later he put it into my “ Notenbuchlein’”’—— 

Thy servant, my sweet Maiden Bride ! 

May luck attend thee in this day’s happiness ! 

Whoever sees thee in thy wreath 

And thy lovely wedding clothes, 

Cannot bui laugh in his heart for sheer joy 

At the contemplation of thy bliss. 

What wonder that my lips and heart 

Overflow with delight to greet thee? 
That was my wedding gift, my foretaste of the happiness 
to come 


[15 ] 








PART II 


THUS began my real life—that which had gone before 
had been but a preparation and a waiting. But before I 
write of the wonderful and happy years that I was the 
wife of Johann Sebastian Bach, I wish to set down as well 
as I can the things I heard from him of his childhood 
and youth—all the time before I knew him—for if this 
chronicle is to have any value for those who come after it 
must tell all that I can of his life from his birth to his 
death. : 

He was born at Eisenach, and to me there always seems 
a certain fitness that the month of his birth was March, 
as that is in the time of Lent, and for Lent and for Holy 
Week he wrote those oratorios on the story of our Lord’s 
death from St. Matthew and St. John, St. Mark and St. 
Luke, which moved his deep soul so strongly. I came in 
upon him unexpectedly when he was writing that alto 
solo in the St. Matthew, ‘Ah, Golgotha,” and was 
startled to see his usual, ruddy countenance gone quite 
ashen and tearspouring out of his eyes. Henever sawme, 
and I stole away and sat down on the stairs outside the 
door and wept myself. How little those who hear such 
music imagine its cost. I wanted to go up to him andput 
my arms round his neck, but I simply dare not, there was 
something in his look whichfilledmewithawe. He never 
even knew that I had entered the room, and I was glad 
he did not know, for it was a moment when only God 


[ 19 | 


PART TWO 


should see him. In that sacred music, set to the words of 
the Gospels he gives so glorious expression, as it seems to 
me, to the feelings all Christians must have as they con- 
template the Cross—Sebastian felt in his own soul all 
that anguish and that beauty before he wrote a note of 
that music. I first heard the St. Matthew Passion com- 
plete in the Thomas Church at Leipzig on Good Friday, 
eight years after we were married, and I could hardly 
bear it, so magnificent and poignant it seemed tome. But 
most people did not care for it, and as it was difficult and 
needed much training of the singers it was not given 
again for eleven years. All that glorious heart-breaking 
music sleeps now in silence—perhaps I will hear it once 
more in Heaven. 

How little could anyone have thought that the small 
Johann Sebastian born in that long, white house at Eisenach 
in 1685, was going to write such music as the St. Matthew 
oratorio—for such music was not in the world, until he 
made it. But of course the Bachs were all musicians and 
had been so long back as any one could remember. 
Sebastian always said that the first musician of the 
family was his great-great-grandfather, Veit Bach, who 
was a miller and baker, and whose greatest pleasure was 
a small cithara, which he used to take into the mill with 
him and play on while the mill ground the corn. “They 
must have sounded sweetly together!” said Sebastian 
withasmile. “And at any rate he must have learned time 
in this way—it was as it were, the beginning of music 
among us, his descendants.”” He was always pleased at the 
thought of the old miller making music in his mill. 

But all the Bach family made music, and many of them 
were organists all over Thuringia. Sebastian’s uncle, 
Johann Michael, whose youngest daughter became his 


[ 20 ] 


PART TWO 


first wife, was organist at Gehren, and a composer, and 
he also made clavichords and violins—which I think 
Sebastian would have done himself had he had more time, 
he was so interested in all musical instruments and so 
clever with them. He always quilled his own harpsichords, 
and never took more than the fourth part of an hour to 
tune them. 

Sebastian has often told me how all the Bachs used to 
meet together at least once a year and make music. ‘They 
always began by singing a chorale, and always amused 
themselves by making ‘“‘quodlibets,”’ harmonising several 
well-known airs by singing them together simultaneously 
—this was more a musical joke than anything else, but 
none of the Bachs would have been content without their 
“‘quodlibets,” and when Sebastian was in a merry mood 
he and his sons would make them round the hearth after 
supper. If I did not join in, perhaps because I was in- 
volved in the intricacy of a gathered shirt I was making for 
him or Friedemann or Emanuel, he would say to me, 
“Mother, let us hear thy sweet piping,” and name me 
some air to sing. He never would leave me out. This 
family liking for quodlibets remained with him, as is 
shown by the Air with Thirty Variations he wrote for 
Count von Kayserling in his later years: the last Variation 
is a quodlibet, made on the combination of two popular 
songs, one about a maiden, and the other about kail and 
turnips, worked out in imitation above the bass. Sebas- 
tian could make music out of any theme. 

His father and his mother died early, and he was taken 
to live with his elder brother, who was organist at Ohrdruf, 
leaving leafy Eisenach with its running streams of water. 
But the ghosts of two dwellers in Eisenach failed not to 
make their impression on his heart—the holy Elizabeth of 


[ 21 ] 


PART TWO 


Hungary and Martin Luther, who was always specially 
vivid to him, because as a child he had looked so often 
upon the Wartburg, and because our great Luther was 
himself such a goodly musician—how often in later years 
have Luther’s hymns inspired him to write great choral 
preludes for the Organ. It was one of the little odd things 
about Sebastian I often noticed with faint surprise that he 
himself, who was such an inexhaustible fount of music, 
needed the music of some other man to set him going. 
When he was inclined to improvise at the Organ or the 
clavichord he would usually play over first some little 
composition of Buxtehede or Pachelbel, or his uncle, 
Christoph Bach, whose music he much admired, and then 
his own genius would flow. It often brought to my mind 
the homely thought of how we pour a little water into the 
pump to start the bounteous stream from the depths 
below. 

Another link between him and Luther, which it pleased 
him to recall, was that as boys they both had marched 
through the streets of Eisenach singing part songs— 
Sebastian in the Scholars’ Choir, which was established 
nearly a hundred years before his birth, and in which the 
citizens of Eisenach had much pride. ‘Our town was 
always celebrated for music,” he would say, and he ex- 
plained to me that ‘‘Isenacum” was the Latin form of 
Eisenach, and ‘‘What is the anagram of ‘Isenacum’ but 
‘en musica’—lo, music, or ‘canimus,’ we sing!” I can 
see him saying that now to me with a pleased smile, and 
I hope I have got it correctly, for I do not know the Latin 
tongue, and he always hated inaccuracy. He was a good 
Latinist himself, which was fortunate, for when he was 
first made Cantor at Leipzig he had to teach the boys at the 
Thomas Schule Latin as well as music. He always meant 


[ 22 ] 


PART TWO 


to teach me a little Latin—he said he would enjoy it as a 
contrast to teaching those inattentive boys—but he never 
really had the time, and of course I was busy too with all 
the children and the house to see about. Besides, a woman’s 
brain is hardly fitted for these high matters. So the only 
Latin I learned was the ‘‘Gloria in excelsis” and ‘‘Credo 
in unum Deum” that I learned because of the Mass he 
wrote in his favourite key of B minor. 

As a boy, Sebastian had a singularly beautiful soprano 
voice—I have talked with those who heard him sing, and 
they all said it was of an exceptional quality. He used to 
sing in the church at Ohrdruf every Sunday and on 
festival days; while at weddings and funerals he would 
sing motets with the rest of the singing boys, and also at 
certain times they sang in the streets—following in this 
the fashion to which he had been used in Eisenach. When 
Sebastian’s voice broke, which it unluckily did soon after 
he left Ohrdruf and went to Liineburg, a curious thing 
happened. One day, as he was singing in the choir, he 
suddenly found himself singing in octaves, with a double 
voice, asit were. This he could not stop or control in any 
way, and for a whole week he continued not only to sing 
but to speak in octaves. I have never heard of such a 
thing happening to anyone before. 

I never saw this elder brother who partly brought up 
my Sebastian, but he always spoke of him with respect 
and gratitude, and in later years returned to his son in 
full measure all that had been given to himself. In certain 
ways it was not good to cross Sebastian, and one of the 
things he would permit from none was any slighting 
reference to his family, even in the remotest branches. 
Therefore I had to give no utterance to a grudge I had 
against this brother of his, inasmuch as I felt that it was 


[ 23 ] 


PART TWO 


partly due to his jealousy, or lack of generosity, that 
Sebastian suffered from a weakness of the eyes that 
troubled him all his life. His brother had a collection, very 
desirable to that child of music, of compositions by cele- 
brated composers to which he was denied access, though 
he had mastered all the music he could lay hands upon. 
This music-book was kept locked in a cabinet with a metal 
lattice-work front, and through the lattice-work, night 
after night for many months that poor boy abstracted it 
and patiently sat up in his little attic copying it out by the 
light of the moon, being candle-less. Small wonder his 
eyes were strained. Then when his large labour was at 
length ended and he began to play the music he had 
obtained by such hard work, his brother, discovering the 
crime, as he regarded it, angrily took his manuscript away 
from him, and he did not regain possession of it till his 
brother’s death in the very year we were betrothed when 
he showed it to me and told me the story, without the 
faintest rancour for his hard usage. But it shows how 
young his determined character declared itself. 

His sense of responsibility was also developed early. 
At fifteen years old he began to support himself. He went 
to Liineburg, and entered the choir of St. Michael’s Con- 
vent, where his beautiful voice procured him a small 
salary as discantist and free commons. Once I went to 
Liineburg, and saw and entered the Michaeliskirche—so 
pleasant a church to look upon, I think, with its red brick 
tower crowned with cap and lantern of green copper. But 
the inside interested me most after all as it had once con- 
tained the seraphic voice of my young Sebastian—that 
voice [had never heard. I fear Isadly grudgeanything of him 
that I have missed, which I should not do, considering the 
goodness of God in allowing me to share nearly half his life. 


wa 


PART TWO 


Sebastian’s voice broke soon after going to Liineburg, 
unhappily, and he had to earn his keep with his violin and 
by generalaccompanying. He had anatural facility for all 
musical instruments, and played the violin, viola, harpsi- 
chord, clavichord, clavecin, viol de pomposa, and above all 
the Organ, his favourite instrument of all, as I believe no 
one in this world has every played it. I do not mean, of 
course, that he played all these instruments when he was 
fifteen years old, but he did when I first knew him— 
except the viol de pomposa, which he invented himself in 
later years. I do desire to write this chronicle of him with 
the exactness he would wish—for I recall how his hand 
would fall upon my shoulder, if I were careless in a state- 
ment or in my playing at the harpsichord, and the little 
shake, half affectionate, half irritated, he would give me. 
Ah, I would risk being very inaccurate indeed could I but 
feel that hand on my shoulder again! 
| And that reminds me to put down that he had remark- 
able hands—they were large and very powerful, and of a 
wonderful compass on the keyboard. He could hold down 
a note with thumb or small finger and do things with the 
rest of his hand as if it were entirely free. He could trill 
with equal ease with any finger on either hand while con- 
tinuing to play complicated interwoven parts. Indeed, I 
believe there was nothing possible (and many things which 
appeared impossible) on the keyboard or the manuals 
which he could not do. And he always maintained that it 
was the pure fruit of diligence and within the reach of all 
who would work with industry and a serious mind. But 
even the best of his pupils could not agree with their 
master in that matter, for the better musicians they were 
the more fully they recognized that quality in him which 
no one else possessed or could acquire by the utmost 


[ a5] 


PART TWO 


labours. But Sebastian never had any sort of personal 
proudness in his great powers, he never seemed to look 
upon them as in any particular sense belonging to himself 
—the life of music he regarded as the greatest life, but the 
musician himself must be humble, not arrogant of his 
gifts. He liked and often quoted one of the articles in the 
Statutes of the Union of Instrumental Musicians of Upper 
and Lower Saxony, which is this (well I remember it, for 
often I copied it out for him to give to his pupils), “‘Inas- 
much as Almighty God is wont marvellously to distribute 
His grace and favours, giving and lending to one much 
and to another little, therefore no man may contemn 
another by reason that he can perform on a better sort of 
musical instrument; much less may he be boastful on 
that account, but be diligent in Christian love and gentle- 
ness, and thus walk in his art, first of all to the honour and 
glory of God most High, to the edification of his neighbour, 
and so as to enjoy and maintain at all times a good report 
of his honourable conduct in the eyes of men.” 

How closely he himself followed this rule his good life 
shows. 

While he was at Liineburg he worked with his own 
extraordinary industry, bringing his keyboard skill to 
perfection, developing his own method of fingering, and 
studying all the music in the rich library of the convent, 
which was such a boon to him. He devoted much time 
and love also to his own special instrument the Organ, and 
had instruction from the organist of St. John’s Church, a 
Thuringian like himself. But he soon outgrew his teacher— 
it always seemed to me it must have been an alarming 
thing to attempt to teach Sebastian any matter of music, 
even in his young years. I think the choiring angels taught 
him ere ever he had any human instruction. So finding he 


[ 26 ] 


PART TWO 


had little more to learn from the excellent Herr Bohm, in 
pursuit of further knowledge Sebastian set out on foot, 
full of youthful vigour, to places where he could hear good 
organists or fine Organs. He walked several times the long 
miles to Hamburg to hear Herr Reinken—to whom he 
was to play with such happy success the very year I first 
saw him, the year before our marriage. Of course, he had 
only a small store of money, and on one of these journeys 
he found himself, very hungry and footsore, sitting on the 
bench under an inn window without a coin in his pocket 
big enough to pay for the humblest meal. As he sat there, 
wondering how he was going to tramp the remaining miles 
on an empty stomach, a window was suddenly thrown up 
and two herrings’ heads pitched out at hisfeet. Sebastian 
picked up this not very appetising fare, thinking that the 
heads of herrings were better than no supper, and to his 
astonishment and joy found inside each head a Danish 
ducat. It was like one of those tales we tell to children 
round the Christmas hearth. Perhaps out of gratitude 
Sebastian always had a liking for herrings, and particularly 
for a dish of them I so often prepared for him, of herrings 
soused in thin white wine with spices and peppercorns. In 
the hot summer weather there were few dishes he liked 
better. With the money from the herrings’ heads he was 
able to get a good meal, and also, which meant much 
more to him, to make another journey to Hamburg to 
hear the organ. On another and considerably later occasion 
—it was in May, 1716—the organ provided him with a 
dinner he often recalled with appreciation. It was when 
he went to Halle with Herr Kuhnau and Herr Rolle to test 
and try the new Organ of thirty-sixstops. After the opening 
of the Organ the Council gave them a very fine repast (on 
Sebastian’s frugal mind it evidently made a considerable 


Lael 


PART TWO 


impression, and he always said it was one of the best meals 
he ever did eat) of pike, beef, gammon of bacon, peas, 
potatoes, spinach and little sausages, boiled pumpkins, 
asparagus salad, cabbage salad, roast veal and radishes, 
fritters, preserved lemon peel and preserved cherries. 
When he was only eighteen Sebastian obtained his first 
post asorganist. He had already been made Court musician 
at Weimar, and it was from Weimar that he made a visit 
to Arnstadt to try a fine Organ but recently installed in the 
“New Church” there. Some of the authorities heard him, 
and at once recognized his genius, despite his youth. The 
organist they had being a very ordinary performer they 
promptly dismissed him to another post, and offered his 
position to Sebastian. The Organ was a beautiful one, 
adorned with wrought and gilded palms and foliage, and 
on either side bright cherubs’ heads and cupidons with 
trumpets. It had two manuals and a fine pedal Organ of 
five stops, of which two were sixteen-feet stops. Sebastian 
all his life spoke of this Arnstadt Organ with a peculiar 
affection, as a mother will of her first child. It was the 
first Organ he could call his own, as it were. His installation 
as organist was very solemnly done, with exhortation to 
industry and faithfulness in his calling, that he act as an 
honourable servant and organist before God and his 
superiors, which made a deep impression on his youthful 
and always serious mind. He felt, he said, as if God had 
visibly set His seal upon him as a musician and—what he 
always wished and intended to be—a Church musician. 
He loved that Organ so much that often, with the church 
key in his pocket and an eager friend to tread the bellows 
for him, they would go in the middle of the night and, 
locking themselves in, he would play till the dawn reddened 
the eastern windows. He had plenty of leisure for practice 


[ 28 ] 


PART TWO 


and study, as his official duties were only to play at the 
services on Sundays and Thursday mornings and at one 
service each Monday, also to accompany the choir re- 
hearsals. But leisure to Sebastian only meant the oppor- 
tunity for work. I never saw him idle, save the occasions 
when he indulged himself with a little tobacco—and though 
I never liked the smell of ptpe-smoke, I was always glad to 
see him enjoying that curious pleasure. In my “Note- 
book” he wrote a song about his pipe, which runs thus: 


Whenever I take up my tobacco-pipe 
Filled with good “‘ Knaster,” 

For my delight, or to pass my leisure, 
Sad pictures float before my eyes, 
And teach me this lesson, 

That Itke the smoke of this pipe am I. 


I liked the air so much that one day I transposed it for a 
soprano voice into G minor and sat down to the harpsi- 
chord and sang it to him while he was puffing at that long 
clay. He was amused at my singing it: “It suits thy 
voice, which is more than tobacco would thy mouth, little 
mother. Let me never see a pipe between thy lips,” said 
he with mock fierceness, ‘‘or thou wilt get no more 
kisses from me!”’ 

But save for such brief interludes, through all our 
married life I never knew him to waste time, which he 
always said was one of the most precious gifts of God and 
would have to be accounted for before His throne. Day 
after day he taught, he composed, he conducted, he played 
the Organ, the clavier, the viola, and other instruments, 
he instructed his family, and whenever he had spare time 
he would read in the many books he slowly collected, 


[ 29 ] 


PART TWO 


especially in those books of theology which so interested 
him, though my weaker mind found them somewhat 
difficult, not to speak of some of them being in Latin. And 
as he did in his mature life, so he did in his young life. 
When people help up their hands and marvelled and 
made fine words about his gifts, he always answered rather 
shortly that it was nothing but “‘hard work.” He never 
had much concern with ignorant approval—the approval 
of musicians was all that mattered to him. “TI play,” he 
once said to me, ‘‘for the best musician in the world— 
he may not be there, but I play as if he were.” I thought 
to myself that he always was there when Sebastian was 
playing, but I did not say so, for that was the kind of 
thing which did not please him. He might say no more 
than “Thou art mistaken, Magdalena,” but by a slight 
narrowing of his eyes and the drawing down of his brows 
I always knew when he was not pleased. 

However, at this time he knew nothing of me either to 
please or vex him, as I was but a youngling of a few years, 
taking uncertain steps in the world, little guessing of he 
to whom they were to lead me. 

While Sebastian was perfecting himself in Organ-playing 
at Arnstadt he desired to have leave of absence to go to 
Liibeck to hear that famous ‘“‘Evening Music” which 
Herr Buxtehede had brought to such beauty that musicians 
would go large distances to hear it. From Arnstadt 
Sebastian had to travel over two hundred miles, but he 
was young and a sturdy walker, and he set out happily in 
the misty autumn weather with a satchel on his back, a 
good staff in his hand and music in his heart to keep him 
company on the road. He had found another to play his 
Organ while he was absent, and he had permission to stay 
away a month. He thought that long enough when he 


[ 30 J 


PART TWO 


started, but soon found when he was in that home of 
music that he could not tear himself away, and it was 
several months before he returned to Arnstédt. The 
“Evening Music” seemed to exercise a kind of enchant- 
ment upon him—as in some of our old childish tales, only 
this was no evil spell. Even in his old age he would some- 
times recall to me the sort of wonder of entering on those 
dark Advent evenings the church, all shining with lights 
and filled with silent listening people, to hear Buxtehede’s 
cantatas, of which he always retained a vivid recollection, 
especially of ‘The Wedding of the Lamb” and “Heavenly 
Delight of the Soul upon Earth over the Birth of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ and His becoming Man.” The 
singing, the strings, and the great Organ quite filled him 
with happiness. As always the Organ drew him, and the 
post of organist would have appealed to him, as it offered 
him greater scope than Arnstadt. And that Liibeck Organ 
might have robbed me of my husband! For Herr Buxtehede 
gave him the knowledge that he might become his succes- 
sor if he were but willing to marry his daughter. Thanks 
to the good God, he was not willing, for the fraiulein was 
of a heavy disposition and in no way attractive to him, also 
she was many years older. No doubt it was a certain dis- 
comfort created by this which awoke him to the necessity 
of returning to Arnstadt. 

When he got back they questioned him why he had 
been so long a time away, and he said he had gone to 
Liibeck to learn certain things connected with his art, and 
that he had first asked permission and obtained it. They 
said he had asked permission for an absence of four weeks 
and had stayed away four times as long. Sebastian, with 
that quiet obstinacy which he, like all the Bachs, possessed, 
took no notice of this, but said that he hoped the Organ 


[3h 


PART TWO 


had been played by his deputy sufficiently satisfactorily to 
leave no cause of complaint. I think the honoured Con- 
sistory must have felt a little baffled by their young 
organist, for they fell back upon another matter—that he 
had made extraordinary variations and changes in the 
chorales, whereby the congregation were confused: also 
that when it was complained to him that he played for too 
long a time he at once went to the opposite extreme and 
made his playing too short. Well, those who did not love 
Sebastian’s organ-playing certainly deserved to be deprived 
of it, so I will not profess to weep for them, though perhaps 
he was a little headstrong and I know he was capable of 
being obstinate. 

But these complaints and trouble he had with the choir 
—to one of the scholars Sebastian, in a moment of temper, 
applied an injurious epithet, and the youth set upon him 
with a stick in the street; Sebastian immediately drew 
his sword and there might have been serious trouble had 
they not been separated—made his position at Arnstadt 
somewhat difficult, and I know, if no one else does, how 
sensitive he was under that strength and even obstinacy 
of his nature. He said once that those who had music in 
the soul paid for it by a skin less than other people. But — 
he was strong and quiet, and he never talked about his 
feelings, as some, especially the French and Italian 
musicians we knew were apt to do, therefore few people 
knew what he was really like inside—unless some of his 
music told them. His feelings were so powerful and his 
temper naturally a little hot that I used to marvel and 
admire at the extraordinary control he had over himself. 
If he made up his mind that he would not do a thing he 
would not do it—and neither I nor anyone else could 
make him. He would be quite gentle about it, but quite 


L g2] 


PART TWO 


immovable. Mercifully for the happiness of the family of 
which he was the head, he was very wise, and rarely made 
mistakes in judgment—only once do I recall when I had 
the temerity to think he was in the wrong. And with all 
his strength of character he was humble-minded in so 
many ways—though in anything that concerned the 
dignity of his calling, his position as Capellmeister or 
Cantor, he would suffer no abatement. He demanded what 
he gave—that is, respect to position and rank. We had 
both of us spent some of our youth at Courts, been con- 
nected with them—I through my father’s position, 
Sebastian through his own. As I knew Sebastian to be so 
much wiser than myself, I felt his attitude of deep respect 
must be right towards kings and those raised by God’s 
Providence above us—yet in my heart I always knew that 
he was so much greater than any royalties, that he was a 
king not only of musicians but of men, that in truth it was 
the princes who should have stood bareheaded in his 
presence, who should have kissed his hands—those 
wonderful hands that made music fitter for the courts of 
Heaven than those of Saxony. I said something of this to 
him once when I was vexed because the Prince had kept 
him waiting very long for an audience, but—which hap- 
pened so rarely—he was quite angry with me for saying it. 
He thought that the hereditary Grand Duke had an 
hereditary right to keep him waiting. But in this matter 
even my husband could not alter what I thought in my 
heart, though of course I know it is true, as he explained 
to me with care, that the foundation of society and 
civilization rests on order and the divine right of kings to 
tule. He believed in order in all things, in his home, and 
his music, and his country. When he had words to make 
music for that dealt with order and duty he was always 


[ 33 ] 


PART TWO 


glad. Iremember a rather excitable French lady who came 
once to see us in Leipzig. She wrote poems and professed 
a great admiration for Sebastian’s music. She praised him 
with an extravagance he did not appreciate, for it was 
plain she had little real understanding of music, and he 
never cared for unbalanced laudation. But she disapproved 
of his setting certain hymns and Gospel passages, especially 
the words of the Church cantata, “Let all be paid duly.” 
‘“‘A subject so dull for your gifts, Monsieur Bach,” she 
cried, with all her feathers nodding, “taxes and tithes, 
law and order. But no!—now, if you would make the 
music to my little poem on Love and Beauty——”’ 

“Madam,” said my dear Sebastian, looking somewhat 
cholerically upon the lady, “there is no Love and no 
Beauty worthy the name without Law and Order and 
Obedience—attention to one’s duties and obedience to 
one’s superiors.”’ 

But I have wandered quite away from the story of his 
youth which I was trying to set down—t is really difficult © 
for me to keep to the letter of my chronicle, for so many 
thoughts of him come crowding in upon me, so many 
memories. 

The Consistory of the “New Church” at Arnstadt had 
perhaps with reason found cause of blame in his long 
absence at Liibeck, and later they found fault with him 
that he did not train and make music with the boys of the © 
choir in the way they desired. Asa matter of truth, Sebas- 
tian was a wonderful master to those pupils who desired 
to learn, who laboured, and loved music. But for the 
rough, rebellious boys of the Arnstaédt School Choir, as 
later for the boys of the Thomas Schule at Leipzig, he 
was at once too great and too impatient. Another matter 
in which fault was found with him was that he had 


[ 34 | 


PART TWO 


allowed a stranger maiden to appear and make music with 
him in the Organ loft. This maiden was no stranger, but 
his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, whom soon afterwards he 
was to marry. 

All these disturbances fretted his spirit and he began 
to desire to go elsewhere than Arnstadt. He was beginning 
to write that music with which his soul was full, and he 
needed a quiet existence and a wife to look after him in 
order that he might produce the gift God had bestowed 
upon him so abundantly. 

Soon after this the post of organist and master of the 
music at St. Blasius in Miihlhausen fell vacant, and 
Sebastian offered himself. ‘There were many to apply for 
it, but when his playing had been heard it was given to 
him without any hesitation—at this time he was twenty- 
two years old. He had now ended his prentice years and 
his journeying years and become ‘‘master,” and he fol- 
lowed our good German custom that the “master” 
should be married and have pupils to whom he hands on 
his knowledge, as he hands on his name to the children 
who are the fruit of his marriage. The fortunate maiden 
on whom his choice fell was his cousin Barbara, who, 
during a part of the time he was at Arnstddt, was staying 
with her aunt in that town, whom he naturally met (the 
Bachs were an attached family and always congregated 
together) and upon whom he bestowed the blessing of his 
love. 

Pastor Stauber of Dornheim, who married them, himself 
married Barbara Bach’s aunt, and among Sebastian’s 
papers I have a copy of the register, which is this: “On 
October 17, 1707, the respectable Herr Johann Sebastian 
Bach, a bachelor, and organist to the Church of Saint 
Blasius at Miihlhausen, the surviving lawful son of the 


[35 ] 


PART TWO 


late most respectable Herr Ambrosius Bach, the famous 
town organist and musician of EKisenach, was married to 
the virtuous maiden, Maria Barbara Bach, the youngest 
surviving unmarried daughter of the late very respectable 
and famous artist Herr Johann Michael Bach, organist at 
Gehren: here in our house of God, by the favour of our 
gracious ruler, after their banns had been read in Arn- 
stadt.” : 

In spite of their little disagreements, Sebastian parted on 
pleasant terms with his superiors at Arnstaédt when he 
went to take up his new post, and they had the kindness to 
lend him a cart to convey his furniture and other posses- 
sions to his new home across the plain from Arnstadt to 
Miihlhausen. And so he settled down, and his first pupil 
was that good and dear Johann Martin Schubart who for 
ten years lived with his master, learning so much from 
daily intercourse with him, so devoted and so loyal. It is 
a cause of regret to me that he died before I knew him, 
for Sebastian always spoke of him with such unchanging 
affection, and during his last illness—when the mind is 
apt to go back to early years—once or twice thought 
Martin was in the room with him. He shared all his 
master’s interests and helped him in every possible way 
in the object he set before himself on first going to Miihl- 
hausen, of improving the Church music and making it as 
worthy of the service of God as might be achieved. Out 
of his own salary Sebastian bought much music for the 
church, as the collection already there was poor and not 
at all to his wishes. The Organ, too, always his first care, 
was in great need of his ministrations, so many of the 
stops were terribly out of order, and the brustwerk quite 
useless. He presented a scheme for the restoration of the 
instrument, which was agreed to and the overlooking of it 


[ 36 ] 


PART TWO 


putintohiscare. At his wish the parishioners had bestowed 
upon the Organ a peal of small bells, a “‘Glockenspiel,” to 
be played by the pedal, an invention of his own, which 
pleased him then, though in later years he was used to 
smile and say it was a piece of youthful folly, and that the 
proper characteristic of the Organ was gravity and nobility 
of tone. 

But he was not destined to stay very long at Miihlhausen. 
He did not find the scope he there hoped for in the de- 
velopment of Church music—there was a good deal of 
disagreement at this time among the learned theologians 
and doctors, and my dear Sebastian, whose own faith was 
so deep and so little troubled by these doctrinal matters, 
found that in this atmosphere of unpeace his music could 
not flourish. As he wrote to the Council at Miihlhausen, 
“While I have always had one end in view, to conduct 
with all goodwill well-regulated Church music to the hon- 
our of God and in agreement with your desires, still this 
has not been done without difficulty, and at this time there 
is not the least likelihood that things will be altered.”’ Also 
his pay was very small, so that he had to tell the authorities 
of St. Blasius, ‘‘I have humbly to represent that, modest 
as is my way of life, with the payment of house-rent and 
other indispensable articles of consumption, I can with 
difficulty live.” 

Therefore, when the Duke Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar 
offered him the post of Court Organist and Master of the 
Chamber Music he was glad to escape to that pleasant 
little town set amidst the woods and waters and mountains. 
At Weimar, the second Christmas after his marriage, his 
first child was born, that Katharina Dorothea, who was a 
young maiden of thirteen when I married her father, and 
who was always such a comfort to me in our home, helping 


[ 37] 


PART TWO 


me like my own daughter with my babies and with the 
many duties that come to the house-mother. All the four 
children of his that I found waiting for me when he 
married me—for the twins, and poor little Leopold had 
died in infancy, as, alas, so many of mine were to die— 
were kind and dutiful to me, and it was not long before 
they seemed like my own children. I could not love 
Sebastian as I did love him and not love his children, 
even though they were not mine, save by adoption. Of 
course, his favourite child always was his eldest son 
Friedemann, so gifted, so understanding and sympathetic 
towards his father—and yet destined to hurt his heart so 
sadly, as Friedemann had so little of the stability and 
wisdom of the Bachs. But we often love best the children 
who trouble us most—and so Sebastian did, though his 
heart was big enough and warm enough to embrace all his 
sons and daughters. I think he felt towards Friedemann 
as I did towards my poor Gottfried, though Friedemann 
was so brilliant and powerful in brain, and poor Gottfried 
one of those whom we call “‘God’s children.” Ah, well, 
I think sometimes it is through our children that the 
Almighty teaches us our deepest lessons. To have borne 
them and to have lost them—through those joys and those 
griefs come our links with the Eternal. 

I know, from all Sebastian told me at different tinted 
that he was happy at Weimar. It was the first time he had 
really known a home of his own—for as he sometimes 
smilingly said to me, no place was a home unless there 
was a house-mother init. His own mother had died when 
he was a child and almost from that day he had been a 
wanderer and sojourner in other people’s houses, with no 
hearth of his own till he married. Moreover, besides his 
own proper home and family which he first fully enjoyed 


[ 38 ] 


PART TWO 


at Weimar, he had the felicity to find a religious and 
musicianly prince in the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and in 
his nephew, who unhappily died young, a soul compact of 
music. Also the town organist, Johann Walther, a good 
composer, was of a kind and friendly nature to him. All 
his life Sebastian needed but his family and a few close 
friends who understood and cared for music to make him 
content. It never was his disposition to run about after 
acquaintance or applause. When he played the Organ in 
different towns—and that was the principal cause of the 
journeys he usually took in the autumn—he necessarily 
brought forth the applause and admiration of all who 
heard him, which he accepted always very quietly as a due 
tribute to his musicianship. I never saw him elated by 
admiration, I never saw him cast down by the lack of it. 
I felt always he had within him some other standard than 
that of this world. Of course, 1am not meaning that he was 
not gratified by appreciation, as for instance that occasion 
when he played on the Organ at Cassel, and the Crown 
Prince was so amazed at his wonderful skill, especially on 
the pedals, that he graciously drew off a ring he was 
wearing on his own hand and bestowed it upon Sebastian, 
who always particularly cherished it. 

To set against all his skill and marvellous knowledge I 
must not forget Herr Walther’s little story of how Sebas- 
tian on one occasion failed. Sebastian was used to declare 
that any trained musician could read and play at sight any 
manner of music, and his fellow-organist and friend 
thought he would amuse himself by setting a little trap to - 
catch him. Sebastian used sometimes to go to breakfast 
with Herr Walther, and while he was awaiting the break- — 
fast which his friend was preparing he went over to the 
clavier to look at a piece of music he saw there and 


[ 39 ] 


PART TWO 


naturally began to play it—he had not gone far before he 
came across some bars which caused him to stumble, so 
rather surprised (for he seldom came upon music more 
difficult than his own) he turned back to the beginning 
and began again, only to halt once more over the same 
passage. At this moment Herr Walther, who had been 
listening for this through the half-opened door, could not 
restrain his laughter, so Sebastian jumped up, saying — 
rather vexedly, ‘“‘No, the man does not live who can at 
sight play everything. It cannot be done.” In later years 
he used sometimes to tell this little story against himself, 
and I have known him use it as an encouragement to 
halting pupils. 

Herr Walther was a connection of Sebastian’s, as both 
their mothers came from the family of Lammerhirt, and 
he knew that house, ‘The Three Roses,” at Erfurt, where 
my Sebastian’s mother was born—that mother whom he 
could but dimly remember and who died too young to 
have the joy of her son’s greatness. But no doubt from 
Heaven the good God would let her listen to his music. 
At least, to my thinking, it would be the less Heaven if one 
could not hear it there, though I fear my Pastor might 
rebuke me for so saying. 

The Castle Church at Weimar was called by the people 
“The Way to the City of Heaven,” and so I am sure it 
was when Sebastian was Court organist there and made 
the music. A Weimar friend of Sebastian’s said to me 
once that ‘“‘among the beautiful Divine services performed 
to the Lord in that Chapel under his direction, the devout 
and heart-stirring music was a foretaste of the heavenly 
joys, and worthy of perpetual praise.” I have always 
remembered his words. 

When Sebastian was at Weimar, with that beautiful 


[ 4o ] 


PART TWO 


little Organ of the Castle under his hand—and feet, I 
should perhaps say, too, as his pedal work was the wonder 
of the time—he came to his full maturity as an Organ 
player and composer. He particularly appreciated the 
quality of the pedal Organ, with its seven stops, one of 
which was of thirty-two feet, and three of sixteen feet, 
which gave him a noble bass such as he delighted in. At 
Weimar and for this Organ Sebastian wrote much of his 
Organ music and particularly that “Little Organ Book” 
out of which I so much loved to hear him play. A few of 
those choral preludes I learned under his tuition to play 
myself, but they were mostly too hard for my small skill. 
He called that book with its leathern back and corners 
which I got to know so well, “A Little Organ Book in 
which it is given to the beginning organist to perform 
chorales in every kind of way, and to perfect himself in 
the study of the pedal, inasmuch as in the chorales to be 
‘foundinit the pedalis treated as quiteobbligato. _ Inscribed 
in honour of the Lord Most High, and that my neighbour 
may be taught thereby.” 

But I was too much always ‘“‘the beginning organist”’ 
to play much out of that book, many things in which are 
indeed very difficult. Sebastian must have found it hard 
really to remember the difficulties of those who begin, he 
himself conquered them so easily. But the joy it was to 
hear him play from that “Little Organ Book” those 
choral preludes!—I have but to open the book and it all 
comes back to me. I know not which I loved best then 
when I was young, but now to me the one above all others 
that comforts me, that is like the voice of my Sebastian 
speaking to me, bidding me have patience, bidding me 
have hope, is that one almost at the end of the book, “For 
the Dying,” “Hark! a voice saith, all are mortal.” ‘The 


Uae] 


PART TWO 


last verse opens its meaning to me as it did not when I was 
young and living with Sebastian in this world: 


O Jerusalem, how clearly 

Dost thou shine, thou city fair ! 
Lo! I hear the tones more nearly, 
Ever sweetly sounding there ! 

Oh what peace and joy hast thou ! 
Lo, the sun is rising now, 

And the breaking day I see 

That shall never end for me ! 


How, when he played it, the melody would sing on the 
Riickpositiv manual, and those solemn groups of quavers 
and semiquavers in the pedal complete one’s peace. All 
Sebastian’s noblest music was evoked by the thought of 
death—that used to frighten me a little, now I understand 
better what was in his heart. 

Two other most lovely choral preludes in “The Little 
Organ Book” were those two for Passiontide, ‘“O Lamb 
of God all holy,” and “‘O men, bewail thy grievous sin” 
—the last few bars of that one are so lovely and so sad I 
always used to feel as if my heart stopped when I listened 
to them. 

But if I begin to think about and recall his music I 
never will get the story of his life written down—only 
that beloved ‘‘Little Organ Book”’ is so full of memories 
of past happinesses to me I find it hard to put the thought 
of it aside. 

During his time at Weimar, Sebastian had become so 
complete and unchallenged a master of the Organ and 
other keyed instruments, and he had perfected so wonder- 
ful and new a manner of fingering that many people were 


[ 42 | 


PART TWO 


beginning to realize he could not be matched. To Dresden, 
where Sebastian was beginning to be known, there came 
a famous French musician, Jean Louis Marchand, a vain 
man, very clever, and challenging all to contest his skill, 
to meet him and give him an occasion to show his super- 
jority. This kind of thing would little perturb my Sebas- 
tian—he would not have walked across the road to talk 
about it. But some of the German musicians were annoyed 
at the assumptions of the Frenchman, and they begged 
and bothered Sebastian to stand up for the dignity of 
German music—“Though little enough they think of 
German musicians,”’ he once said, ‘‘ but leave them to shift 
for themselves, so that many are too overwhelmed with 
cares for their daily bread to be able to perfect, far less to 
distinguish themselves.” However, on this occasion he 
agreed, rather reluctantly, to accept Marchand’s challenge. 
All the details of the meeting were arranged—it was to 
take place at the Field-Marshal’s abode, and many Court 
ladies and gentlemen were present, waiting with eager 
interest, when into the magnificent apartment, all shining 
with wax lights, walked Sebastian, as always, quiet and 
composed. He was ready to deal with any musical problem 
the Frenchman might set him. They all waited some time, 
and then it was suggested that a lackey should be sent to 
Monsieur Marchand’s lodgings to hasten him. He returned 
with the news that the Monsieur had departed from 
Dresden that morning by express coach. It appeared that 
he had taken the opportunity unknown to hear Sebastian 
play, and recognizing that in him was someone before 
whose gifts his own were of small avail, he felt the only 
way to save his reputation was not to compete. 

I should say I had not this story from Sebastian himself, 
_ but from another who was there. Sebastian never took any 


[43] 


PART TWO 


pleasure in a rival’s discomfiture, and was always slightly 
vexed when this episode was alluded to, saying Monsieur 
Marchand was a very good musician, and that too much 
had been made of the whole affair. Once, when Sebastian 
was in Erfurt, in order to stop some disparagement of 
Marchand that was going on, he said, “I will show you 
how pretty are his clavier suites, which you affect to 
despise,” and he sat down and played them with exquisite 
smoothness and delicacy, making them sound, in truth, 
much better than they really were. But that was just 
like his generosity to all other musicians. The altitude of 
his standard was always mitigated by the kindness of his 
heart. 

He was invariably anxious to meet and listen to 
musicians of his own or any other country. It was a real 
disappointment to him that all his efforts to meet Herr 
Handel ended in failure—for he so much admired and 
delighted in his music, spending many hours in copying 
out the scores of his compositions (a happy task in which 
I helped him) and giving a beautiful performance when he 
was at Leipzig of Hiandel’s cantata on our Lord’s Passion. 
As they were both born in Saxony and actually in the same 
year, Sebastian felt there was some link between them 
besides music, and he made several efforts to meet Handel. 
Once when Hiindel was visiting his native town of Halle, 
Sebastian walked from Céthen to make his acquaintance, 
but reached there the very day Handel had departed. Ten 
years later, as Handel was again in Halle, he sent him a 
courteous invitation by his son to come and see him at 
Leipzig, he himself being unwell and unable to make the 
journey to Halle. But Herr Hindel found himself unable 
to come, and so my husband was disappointed of his wish 
to meet and speak with a composer he admired, and who, 


[ 44 ] 


PART TWO 


I felt, might perhaps have taken a little trouble on his side 
to meet his great fellow-countryman. For he must have 
been musician enough to recognize the quality of Sebas- 
tian’s work, even though it was not known outside Ger- 
many, while Handel’s own was lauded in countries so far 
as Italy and England. But Handel sought the world, and 
travelled about greatly, and made much money, while my 
Sebastian shunned the world and lived quietly in his home. 

The time he usually travelled a little was in the autumn, 
when he went to various places, nearly always to try and 
to report on anew Organ. He was constantly being asked 
to do that, for people were coming to realize not only that 
he understood the playing but the construction of Organs, 
and his judgments were completely unswerving and im- 
partial. Indeed, his friends often said that he made himself 
enemies by his honesty, for he would not turn a blind eye, 
or pass any defect, however small—‘‘ Nothing is small,” 
_ he said, “that concerns an Organ.” ‘The first thing he 
always did was to draw all the stops, so that he might hear 
the full Organ: he wanted to find out, he would say with 
a smile, whether the instrument had good lungs. Then he 
would go searchingly through every detail. The Organ 
builder who lacked uprightness had indeed cause. to 
tremble when Sebastian came to examine his work. 

In the autumn of 1717 Sebastian was asked by the 
young Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Céthen to become his 
Capellmeister. He was glad to accept, as he was feeling 
somewhat hurt at having been passed over in the same 
appointment in Weimar: the old Capellmeister having 
died, Sebastian not unnaturally expected to have the offer 
of the place. But it was given instead to his son, a very 
inferior musician, on the ground of relationship. I think 
Sebastian must have felt really angry over this matter and 


[45 ] 


PART TWO 


shown it, anyway he demanded his release from his 
engagement, in order to take up the Céthen appointment, 
in such a peremptory manner that the Duke was angered, 
and ordered him to be kept under arrest for a whole 
month. It seems to me one of the hard things about a 
Court musician’s life that he should be so far from free. 
However, by Christmas, Sebastian with his wife and young 
family had moved to Céthen, and settled down there to 
an even quieter life and one more out of the world than 
he had lived at Weimar. For the time he was there he had 
only the small Organ of the Castle to play upon, and no 
official connection with Church music. But he devoted 
himself to chamber music, and his young Prince was most 
kind and sympathetic to him—a trained musician himself 
and ardent in love of it, he appreciated his Capellmeister 
at his true worth. He was gracious enough to stand as god- 
father to the son born to Sebastian and Barbara Bach at 
Coéthen—that little baby, who died so young, being 
christened in the Castle chapel—and when the Prince 
went to take the waters at Cassel he carried his Capell- 
meister with him. Sebastian loved Céthen and its quiet 
and peace, though even if a change of circumstance had 
not driven him forth a few years later, I do not think he 
could have continued to live there, cut off from what 
meant so much to him as a composer—the music of the 
Church, the expression of his own deep religious nature. 

At Céthen Maria Barbara Bach died, leaving him with 
four living children out of the seven she had borne him 
in their thirteen years of marriage. At Céthen he married 
me. And so having told as well as I am able, the story of 
his life up to the time when I first knew and loved him, I 
wil go on to tell of all the years I spent at his side. 


[ 46 ] 





a . ¥ 





PART III 


I DO not think Sebastian was a very easy person to know 
—unless you loved him. Had TI not loved him from almost 
the very first I certainly would never have understood him. 
He was reserved in speech about deep things, he did not 
express himself in the words he said, but in what he was, 
and, of course, above all in his music. He was the most 
religious man I ever knew, which sounds strange when I 
think of all the good Lutheran pastors with whom I have 
been acquainted, men whose whole business in life was 
religion and to set an example of worthy living to the rest 
of us. But with Sebastian it was different, it was something 
inside him, partly hidden, but never forgotten. There 
were certain things about him that made me afraid at 
times, especially at first—a rock-like sternness that under- 
lay his kindness, but more than all a strange longing he 
had all his busy life for the end, for death. I only glimpsed 
it now and then, for I think he felt it frightened me, and 
I was younger than he and much less brave. I did not 
want to leave him and the world which I found so pleasant 
so long as he was in it, but now that I am old and alone 
and he has gone before me I better understand that longing 
he had to go where all things are made perfect, to behold 
his Master, Christ. Deep down in his great heart he 
always carried his Lord Crucified, and his noblest music 
is the cry of that longing for death which will give him the 
Vision of his Risen Lord. I had been religiously brought 


[ 49 ] 


PART THREE 


up in the Lutheran faith by my good parents, but Sebas- 
tian’s religion was something bigger than I had known 
before. I felt it the very day we were married, when all 
the people had gone away, and Sebastian came to me and 
lifting up my face in his two hands and looking long at me, 
said, ‘‘I thank God for thee, Magdalena.” I could not say 
anything, but hiding myself on his breast prayed so hard, 
““Oh, God, make me worthy of him, make me worthy 
of him!” I was only young, and it rushed over me then 
what an awful responsibility it was to be the wife of such a 
man as Sebastian Bach. If I had made him unhappy in any 
way I might have spoiled his music. As he said once and 
often, discords are the harsher the nearer they approach 
the unison—so disagreements between husband and wife 
are the most intolerable in the world. We had troubles, 
Sebastian and I, as all people have who dwell on this earth, 
but they were outside us, they did not touch our love. 
Because he was fifteen years older than I was, because 
he had been married before, I think he was specially in- 
dulgent tome. Of course, I could cook and spin and use 
my needle, but I had never had the cares of a house and 
children on my shoulders before, and my mother was so 
good a house-wife and bore the burdens so easily that I 
hardly realized all there was to do and to remember in 
order to make comfort in the home. I soon found that 
disorder was a thing Sebastian could not endure—his 
papers and his personal belongings were to be kept in a 
certain manner and no other. And he hated unpunctuality, 
as he hated waste, for to be unpunctual was to waste what 
he ever held of a priceless value, time—the one thing, he 
said, we could never have twice over. At first, I fear, I was 
a little careless and forgetful, but he was patient with me 
and I soon cured myself when I saw it disturbed him, for my 


[ 50 ] 


HOSPIAL LIDIA | 
ed we 


aS vi... ( 
JL bud 2 bd 


PART THREE 


one wish, my only object, was to please him and to make 
his home the place where he would be happiest in this world. 

Just a week after our marriage the Prince of Anhalt- 
Céthen, who had so high an opinion of Sebastian, who 
had been so gracious to me, himself took a bride. It did 
not seem as though this exalted wedding would affect our 
humble fortunes in any marked way, but of a truth it was 
the direct cause of our going to Leipzig, where we were 
to spend the rest of our lives together. The Prince’s 
greatest joy, up to the time of his marriage had been 
music, and he naturally found that music centred in and 
radiated from his Capellmeister Sebastian Bach—the 
concerts, though they were small, he not being wealthy 
enough to keep large troops of musicians as some of the 
very rich princes did, were most beautiful under Sebas- 
tian’s direction, performing as they so frequently did the 
music he composed for them. Perhaps his new Princess 
felt that too great a portion of her royal husband’s time 
was given to music and to Sebastian—she may have been 
a little jealous, or she may have been a little weary of the 
chamber concerts, for one knows there are people, even in 
exalted circles, to whom music has small appeal, though I 
have never had the misfortune to live much among them. 
But at least, after a few months, a change began to appear 
in our Prince, he ceased to play much himself, he withdrew 
his presence and encouragement from the concerts, the 
Court of Céthen grew cold to music. Sebastian was as- 
tounded and unhappy, he could not live in an atmosphere 
like that. Hecame home to me one day after a rebuff that 
had shown him more completely how the Prince’s interest 
had left music and turned to his delicate and rather ex- 
acting Princess. ‘“ Magdalena,” he said, with a sad and 
dark countenance, “‘we shall have to leave Céthen and go 


[ 51 ] 


PART THREE 


elsewhere, this has ceased to be a place for a musician. 
Art thou willing to pull up thy little home?” I told him, 
as was right and true, that my only home was where he 
was and comforted him as best I might. But the thought of 
leaving Cothen was heavy to us both, for he loved the 
place, and to me it was my first married home, and all 
women will understand what it means to uproot oneself 
from that place of tender memories. 

We had only a little more than a year together at 
Coéthen, but it was a year so full and wonderful to me, the 
first year I was Sebastian’s wife. To live with him and see 
him day by day seemed to me a good fortune I never 
could deserve—for a long time I went about in a kind of 
astonishment and dream, a dream from which at times 
when he was out of the house I feared I would awaken 
and find myself that poor thing Anna Magdalena Wulken, 
instead of Frau Capellmeister Bach. Then I would hear 
his step outside, I would run to the house-door and there 
he would be with a caress and tender word for me, as I 
would shelter myself within his arm and know it was no 
dream, but a kind reality. 

Very soon after our marriage he gave me a music-book he 
had made for me—I have it now, and whatever my poverty 
may be never will I part with it while I live. One evening, 
after I had seen his four young children safely to bed, Icame 
downstairs and was sitting at the table by the candle working 
on a score I was copying out for him when he came quietly 
in and laid before me a small oblong book, bound in green, 
with a back and corners of leather in which was written— 

CLAVIER BUCHLEIN 


VOR 
ANNA MAGDALENA BACHIN 
ANNO 1722. 


[ 52 ] 


PART THREE 

When I turned the pages with eager fingers, while he stood 
and watched me with a smile so good and kind, I found 
that he had written for me in this book many easy pieces 
for my playing on the clavier—on which instrument he 
had begun giving me lessons. I was not yet very advanced, 
though I could play a little before I was married, and he 
had written these little melodious compositions to please 
me, to encourage me, to suit the stage of skill at which I 
had arrived and lead me gently on towards a higher one. 
Amongst these pieces was a grave and beautiful sarabande 
—I always thought his sarabandes in the clavier Suites and 
Partitas were peculiarly lovely and expressive of his mind 
—and the gayest little minuet, and all were of a charm , 
to tempt any student to the keyboard. Thus he was 
ever ready to stoop from his own height and take by 
the hand a child or a beginner. Nothing ever made 
him impatient with a pupil save indifference or careless- 
ness. 

If I can only explain what his teaching was like—he 
taught me, so I know myself, not just from looking on at 
his teaching of others. I suppose there never was another 
master like him in this world, so inspiring, so patient ' 
(though never with idleness) yet so relentless, with ears 
and eyes that missed no smallest slip, that tolerated no 
carelessness. I have seen those young men, his pupils, 
brace themselves from trembling before going in to him, 
and come out with tears in their eyes because he had been 
so kind to them. And I have seen them go white, if he 
were in any way angry with them, as he was sometimes, 
though rarely. But occasionally his passionate nature 
would break through, and with certain forms of conceit he 
had small tolerance, as once when he snatched off his wig 
and flung it at a pupil whom he contemptuously called a 


[ 53 | 


PART THREE 


“clavier knight,” meaning one who tried to make a 
brilliant effect without solid work behind it. 

But he was of an angelic gentleness when he taught me 
—never can I forget those heavenly lessons, those hours 
when I sat at his feet and learned of music. Of course, he 
did not put me through such a severe training as he gave 
his young men. I was not going to make my livelihood by 
music, and, moreover, in the earlier years I had so many 
babies to occupy my time that I had to fit in the music 
when I might. But in the first year or so of our married 
life he gave me clavier and harpsichord lessons, also 
lessons on playing from the figured bass, and, for a time 
he gave me lessons on the Organ. He laughed at mea little 
for wishing to learn and said it was too big an instrument 
forasmall woman. “Why,” said he, “‘if I pull out all the 
stops for organo pleno thou wilt want to put thy fingers 
in thy ears and run back to thy home!” But as I refused 
to be discouraged by his gentle teasings he gave me a 
lesson whenever he could spare the leisure—and I believe 
he enjoyed those lessons as much as I did, which is to say 
a great deal. There is something strangely thrilling in even 
touching the keys of the organ. As I have said, he had 
already given me clavichord lessons, and, of course, even 
before my marriage I could play a little on harpsichord and 
clavichord—but the Organ was a much bigger matter. The 
three manuals were no great trouble to me, though there 
was an oddness in playing one’s melody on the Riickpositiv 
manual at a lower level than the bass on the Brustwerk, as 
sometimes he would have me do, but I soon became used 
to that. But when it came to using one’s feet to play the 
pedal keyboard, then I was bewildered. At first I played 
chants and cantionals in four parts with my two hands, 
and then he made me take the bass with my feet. It made 


[ 54] 


PART THREE 


me feel absolutely all confused and turned wrong way 
round. With my two hands on the manuals and my foot 
on a pedal note I would simply stop and look at Sebastian 
as he stood by me, “I cannot go on!” I said, “I cannot 
move!” ‘Thou art a small goose,’ said he, “were we 
not in church I would kiss thee!” But though he laughed 
at me he was endlessly patient, and at last, after toilsome 
practice, I could strike the pedal notes without feeling, as 
it seemed, many minutes for each one with my toes. He 
refused from the very beginning to let me look for the 
pedal keys. ‘“‘A fine matter it would be,” he said, “if thou 
couldst not hit a note with thy fingers without first looking 
to see if it were the right one! It is a very bad organist 
who looks at his pedals, and that I will not allow thee to 
become. ‘Thou mayest not go very far on the organist’s 
road, but at least thou shalt go right.” 

I did not go very far—but I went far enough, which was 
all my intention, to understand more fully how most 
wonderful was Sebastian’s own playing. If one is quite 
ignorant of the difficult things of the Organ one cannot 
even understand in the least what it means to play fugues 
and choral preludes as he played them. As well might he 
play them to a fish out of the ocean—and I, the wife of 
this musician, did not wish to be a fish, deaf and quite 
stupid. The toil and the time I spent in learning to play 
on the Organ, even to the small degree of skill I attained, 
was well repaid to me in the peculiar joy I ever after had 
in those many and glorious works Sebastian made for that 
most beloved of all instruments. 

In my “Clavier Buchlein” he began a fantasia for the 
Organ for me, but he never had time to finishit. I grew to 
love the Organ with a special love because he loved it so 
deeply, and I always feel that his most noble, most moving 


[55] 


PART THREE 


music is that he wrote for the Organ—the music in which 
he most fully expressed his own nature, his own soul. I 
know there are good judges who prefer his cantatas, and 
others the lovely things he wrote for the clavier—well, 
when one pauses to think, it is very hard to choose and 
decide, one can only say in the words of the Bible, “‘as 
one star differeth from another star in glory ie 

But I have wandered away from what I wanted to tell, 
which was his manner of teaching. He had thought out his 
method very carefully, he felt no trouble too great for 
“the young who desire to learn.” If he was taking a begin- 
ning pupil at the clavier—as he took his own sons—this is 
what he would do. First he would give exercises in touch, 
in fingering—it was he who first used what he claimed was 
the natural method of crossing the thumb under the 
fingers, instead of over them, as had been somewhat 
awkwardly done up to his time, by those who had used 
the thumb at all, which was rare—and in the equal use of 
each finger in trills and embellishments. Till ease was 
acquired in these matters he did not allow any further 
steps, but for his pupils he wrote the most charming little 
pieces to enable them to overcome particular difficulties 
at the same time their minds were pleased and their toil 
lightened by pleasant melodies. I have seen him turn from 
the clavier, where a pupil might be struggling with some 
little point he could not properly overcome, and, snatching 
a sheet of paper, write down upon it in his rapid hand, 
which never seemed to match the speed of his thought, 
some little “Invention” which presented the particular 
difficulty in its clearest and most attractive form, so that — 
for sheer love of him and of music the pupil would be en- 
couraged to further efforts. He would tell his pupils, with 
that kind smile of his, “You have five as good fingers on 


[ 56 | 





PART THREE 


each hand as I have, and if you will but practise with them 
you will play as well as I can play—it needs but applica- 
tion.” 

For his eldest son, Friedemann, who was ever the 
dearest of his pupils, he made a “Little Clavier Book,” 
when the child was ten years old—that was in the year 
before our marriage. Friedemann having outgrown its use 
and the other children having progressed according to their 
abilities through its pages, I rescued it from possible 
destruction—for Sebastian himself had little care to pre- 
serve his minor compositions. If one disappeared or was 
mislaid he would say cheerfully, ‘Well, then, I must 
write another.” His mind was as fruitful as that old cherry- 
tree which stood in my great-aunt’s garden at Hamburg. 

In Friedemann’s “Little Clavier Book” he wrote and 
explained on the first page the keys and the principal 
ornaments and embellishments in music, and then came a 
little piece in which he most carefully marked the fingering, 
called ‘‘Applicatio,’ at the head of which he put the 
words “In nomine Jesu.”’ He wrote all his music in that 
Name, both the big things and the little things. I remember 
once that he was pleased when he came into the parlour of 
our house at Leipzig where I was playing a gigue of his to 
which a pair of our young ones were merrily prancing, 
when I said to him, “I think the Baby Jesus might dance 
to that melody, Sebastian.”” He came up to me and kissed 
the back of my neck. ‘That is a pretty thought of thine, 
little sweetheart,” he said smiling, and I was glad that any 
thought of mine should pleasure him. But, indeed, he 
could write music tender enough for the Babe of Bethle- 
hem—that Lullaby in the Christmas Cantata, surely His 
Blessed Mother would have loved to sing it to Him!— 
and grand enough for the Saviour of Calvary, like that 


[57] 


PART THREE 


Crucifixus of his great Mass. At the end of his first scores 
Sebastian always wrote ‘‘S. D. G.,”’ which he told me 
when I questioned him as to what those letters meant, was 
“Soli Dei gloriae”—To God alone the glory. 

For Friedemann he wrote many of those little two- and 
three-part Inventions which a year later he made into a 
separate and fuller volume, that he called “An honest 
Guide by which the lovers of the clavier, but particularly 
those who desire to learn, are shown a plain way, not only 
to learn to play neatly in two parts, but also, in further 
progress to play correctly and well in three obbligato parts; 
and, at the same time, not only to acquire good ideas, but 
also to work them out themselves, and, finally, to acquire 
a caniabile style of playing, and, at the same time, to gain 
_astrong predilection for a foretaste of composition.” 

No wonder, with all the pains and care he took for them, 
that Sebastian’s two eldest sons became such notable 
musicians—Friedemann as an organist second only to his 
father, and Emanuel one of the great clavichord players 
of his time, as well as an exceedingly gifted composer. 
When we were married in 1721, Friedemann was eleven 
years old, Emanuel seven, and the little Johann Gott- 
fried only six, while the dear Katharina was two years 
older than Friedemana. So I had a complete little family 
to mother from the very first, and, owing probably to the 
kind example of their father, those young ones soon began 
to love me and to confide in me their little pleasures and 
troubles, though Friedemann, as the biggest boy and 
responsible companion of his father was at first a little 
more aloof from me. But we were very happy, and happiest 
of all when we could drag Sebastian from his duties at 
Court and his composing and rehearsing and induce him 
to accompany us when, in the warm weather, we would 


[58] 


PART THREE 


pack some food into a little hamper and all go to some 
shady spot out of doors to eat it. He and the young ones 
had many merry games at these times, he would take off 
his coat and behave like a boy himself, and we all laughed 
much and eat more, so that I never could countenance one 
of these country days without a special baking beforehand. 
I used to feel as young as the children, and, I fear, at 
times forgot the decorum of a married woman, for when 
Sebastian was in a gay mood, full of little jokes and 
teasings, it infected us all to mirth. Then, when the children 
began to flag a little, and the small Johann snuggled into 
my lap, Sebastian would sometimes tell us stories, the 
legends he had learned in his own childhood at Eisenach, 
or, which I liked even better, true tales of those two who 
had also lived at Ejisenach, St. Elizabeth and Martin 
Luther. And so we would troop homewards in the evening 
light, and after I had got the weary children to their beds, 
I, tired myself and very peaceful, would sit with Sebastian, 
my hand in his, and my head on his shoulder. They were 
days of great happiness that God bestowed upon us at 
Cothen. 

And soon a still better thing was bestowed upon me— 
a child of my own, that first-born whose coming no woman 
forgets. When all the flannels lay warming on the hearth 
my kind old nurse let him come in to me for a moment. 
He had a somewhat anxious look, but he said cheerfully, 
“My good and dear one, all the Bach women are the 
joyful mothers of children’—then suddenly, in quite a 
different voice, putting his arm tenderly round me, “My 
poor lamb, how I hate that thou shouldst have to suffer!” 
And it was his saying that, in that voice so kind, which 
comforted me until our child was born. 

We had in all thirteen children. God abundantly blessed 


[ 59 | 


PART THREE 


us and made me as the fruitful vine upon the walls of my 
husband’s house. And he was so good a family-father. I 
used to think that he never looked so great and so benign 
as when seated at the head of his table with all his sons 
and daughters round the board, his beloved Friedemann 
on one side of him, while I had the last youngling on my 
lap, gnawing its baby teeth through on a crust. A certain 
sternness that hung over him at times completely dis- 
appeared at these domestic gatherings, and he was all 
geniality and affection—interested in all they had to tell 
him, no smallest tale of smallest child too trivial for his 
kind attention. Respect and reverence they all rendered 
him—a duty children naturally owe their father—but the 
proportion of filial fear in their love was considerably less 
than is common. Strange as it seems, he never, to my 
certain knowledge, laid a hand upon any of them—my 
own father, kind as he was, had quite frequently chastised 
me in my childhood. Our acquaintance used to say we 
would ruin the boys by such indulgent treatment, and I 
have sometimes wondered whether Friedemann’s faults 
may not have been due to lack of correction, for he had a 
much more difficult nature than any of the others. But 
when they were children they never needed more than 
the deepening of his voice and the quick frown that came 
when he was angry. That was enough. 

Once, when Friedemann had told his father a deliberate 
lie, Sebastian was so grieved that he neither spoke nor 
looked at him for a whole day, and Friedemann went 
about with a miserable sullen countenance. A cloud lay 
over us all, it was impossible for me to be content if 
Sebastian was unhappy. ‘Towards the close of the day I 
found the boy face downwards on his bed, weeping very 
bitterly. ‘“‘Friedemann,” I said, and I could not help 


[ 60 ] 


PART THREE 


thinking of the Prodigal Son in the Parable of our Lord, 
“Why dost thou not go to thy father and confess thy 
fault and ask his forgiveness?” ‘‘Oh, little Mother,” he 
answered (and it was the first time he had called me by 
that name), “Iam afraid.” ‘Come thou with me,” I said, 
“‘we will go together.”’ So he arose from his bed, and with 
his tear-stained countenance went down to Sebastian. 
“We have come to say we are sorry,” I told him, and 
suddenly Friedemann dropped on the floor and hid his 
face on his father’s knee, and we all cried a little. Then 
Sebastian and I smiled at each other because of our tears, 
and he kissed his son and the estrangement was ended. 
But that, alas, was not the only time Friedemann made his 
father unhappy in the years that were to come, for he was 
at times moody and excitable, and he had a distressing 
tendency to extravagance, in which he was utterly unlike 
Sebastian, who was always so careful and wise in the use 
of money. But he was so brilliant, so quick, so full of 
understanding. His brother, Carl Philip Emanuel, with 
his round brown face and brown eyes, was of a different 
nature, steady, hard-working, and nearly as good a 
musician, but much more solid in disposition. Yet it was 
to Friedemann that Sebastian instinctively turned, as I 
soon saw, though he was so just that he endeavoured not 
to display any particularity among his children. 

But I suppose a father has always a special feeling to- 
wards his eldest son—it used to give me a little stab of the 
heart sometimes to feel that no child of mine could be 
Sebastian’s first-born son. However, when my little 
Christiane Sophie was laid in his arms, I felt proud and 
happy enough to put that thought aside. Like all the 
Bachs and like Luther, whom he always regarded with 
affectionate respect, he was deeply attached to his family, 


[61] 


PART THREE 


and cared much for the society of his children. Occasion- 
ally he would flare up if they made too great a noise with 
their playings when his mind was full of music—I did my 
best to quieten them, but sometimes they got beyond me 
—and then they would be awed into a hushed whispering. 
But it was rarely that he was angry with them, and I used 
to marvel sometimes to see him calmly composing and 
writing music amid all their childish babble as though he 
were quite alone by himself. 

And sometimes, if at midnight a crying baby should 
awaken us and needed to be rocked or fed, he would never 
be impatient, but tell me to sing it a song of heavenly 
things, so that we all might profit by my lullaby. He made 
me an air to sing to Luther’s lovely little song of the Baby 
Jesus-lein cradled in straw, but after he had written it 
down and I had it by heart, he seized the little score and 
tore it up, saying he had written it for me and me alone, 
and it should have no life in any other voice than mine. 
Therefore, as it was his wish that it should die with me I 
will not write it down, though it seems somewhat sad that 
it should vanish out of the world when I go, for it is very 
sweet. If my singing should fail to soothe the infant’s 
fretting, himself would often take it in his arms and charm 
it into slumber. I have seen that babies are often soothed 
by being held ina man’sarms. I think it must give them 
a sense of security, they unconsciously sink into the 
strength of the arm that supports them—for if a man 
takes an infant he always holds it firmly, perhaps because 
he is more afraid than a woman of dropping the small 
creature. And if the young ones liked to be held by him, 
so firmly and so gently, I loved to see him with a child in 
his kind arms—it used to give me a sort of feeling of 
happy tears to see him bending the greatness of his mind 


[ 62 | 


PART THREE 


to a thing so small as a month-old child. How tender were 
his feelings towards infancy is shown by these lines he 
wrote himself and presented with the first partita of the 
“Clavieriibung”’ to the new-born heir of the Prince of 
Anhalt-Cothen: 

Most Serene, Sweet Prince, wrapped in thy swaddling- 

clothes, 

Although thy princely look betokens riper years, 

Forgive me if I should awaken thee from sleep 

By allowing my page of melody to pay thee tts respects. 

It 1s the first-fruit brought by my lyre, 

Thou ari the frst Princeling to be embraced by thy mother, 

She should sing it first in thy honour, 

For thou, like this page, art a first-born in the world. 

Wiseacres nowadays frighten us, and say 

We come into the world moaning and crying 

As though we wanted to complain in advance 

That this short term is sad and iroubled; 

But I reverse this and say that as the sounds 

That round thy childhood swell are sweet and pure and 

clear, 

So will thy life be happy, secure and beautiful 

And form a harmony of noble joy— 

So, Prince full of hope, I will play to thee again 

When thy fulfilment is more than a thousandfold. 

I only desire always, as now, to feel the inspiration, 

That I may be, 
Serene Prince, 
Thy most earnest servant, 
Bach. 


Sebastian had much of the paternal in his nature, he 
thought constantly of his own children, and worked for 


[ 63 J 


PART THREE 


them and for their sound education, and was more ambi- 
tious of their progress in the world than he ever had been 
of his own. At times me too he treated as a tender father 
might his daughter—he was so broad, so strong, such a 
refuge in the trouble that came upon me when my first 
child died. How sad he was to lose that little one, who was 
only three years old, at the pretty prattling stage, with 
eyes so blue and hair of pale gold, but in his sadness his 
consideration was only of me, and I think at that time, at 
the first heavy trouble I had known, I came to love him 
even more deeply—if that were possible. 

But only that little Christiane Sophie was born at 
Cothen, all the others came to us at Leipzig, so I am once 
more getting in front of my story. As I have told already, 
we had only been living at Céthen a little over a year after 
our marriage when Sebastian found that his Prince’s 
interest had so turned away from music that he felt it no 
longer possible to remain in his post of Capellmeister. The 
Court of Céthen did not really offer him the scope he 
needed, for there he was dissevered from connection with 
Church music. All his work was chamber music, and it 
was at Céthen he invented and caused to be made an 
instrument to supply a particular need he felt lacking in 
his strings—an instrument that he christened the ‘‘viol 
de pomposa,” which had five strings and was something 
between a violin and a violoncello: he wrote a Suite for it. 
He played both violin and viola himself, having been 
taught in the first case by his father, Ambrosius Bach, 
whom I had never known, but whose portrait, painted in 
oil colours, always hung in a place of honour in our living- 
room. For many years Sebastian was violinist in the Duke’s 
band at Weimar, but when he was playing in domestic 
string quartets for his own private pleasure, he preferred 


[ 64 ] 


PART THREE 


to play the viola, as there, he would say, he felt himself at 
the centre and middle of the harmonies, and could enjoy 
and appreciate more fully what went on at each side of 
him, as it were. 

At Céthen he wrote, as was to be expected in his 
position, much music for strings, and there he also wrote 
and put together a collection of pieces which all the serious 
musicians who knew them valued highly—a collection of 
twenty-four preludes and fugues for the clavichord, which 
he called “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” and said that he 
had written for ‘‘the edification and use of young musi- 
cians who are eager to learn, and for the recreation of 
those who are already facile in this study.” It was indeed 
needful to be “facile” in order to play them as a recrea- 
tion, for most of them are of considerable difficulty in per- 
formance and demand arduous practice and the whole 
attention of a thoughtful mind. But many of Sebastian’s 
more advanced pupils have told me how they discovered 
an ever-increasing joy and satisfaction in these preludes 
and fugues the oftener and more faithfully they studied 
them. And I, who found most of them quite beyond my 
capacity, at least had extraordinary pleasure in listening 
when Sebastian played them. ‘The swift rush of clavid 
notes under his fingers—he was fond of a fast tempo—in 
some of the preludes, the marvellous mingling of the 
different voices in the fugues, each voice so individually 
clear and yet all so woven together into an indissoluble 
whole—ah, there never was anyone who could so make 
plain the meaning of contrapuntal music as Sebastian 
himself! I often coaxed him to play for my benefit when 
he had a few spare minutes, a prelude and a fugue or, 
maybe, a couple of them. “Thou wilt turn me into a 
Bad-Tempered Musician if thou wilt have so much of the 


[ 65 | 


PART THREE 


Well-Tempered Clavier!” he said to me teasingly one 
day with his left arm round my waist as I stood by him at 
the clavichord, while he started a fugue with his right 
hand, and when the second voice came in he would not 
release me, but played it right through, holding me within 
the circle of his arm. “There!” he cried, smiling, as he 
wound up on the last chord, ‘‘serves thee right for being 
so greedy for fugues!” 

What a piece of kind fortune to be the wife of Johann 
Sebastian Bach when one was greedy for fugues! But I 
must confess it was not for all fugues I was eager, for 
some seem to me very dry kind of things, having small 
relation to music. Not so Sebastian’s—he could make a 
fugue gay and fresh and sparkling, like running water, or 
sad or tender or solemn, like the E flat minor prelude and 
fugue. 

By this time Sebastian’s destiny was leading him away 
from Céthen and chamber music to Leipzig, where he was 
to spend the last remaining twenty-seven years of his life, 
and where he was to write the greater amount of his choral 
and sacred music. 

The old Cantor of the Thomas Schule at Leipzig had 
died, and one reason which induced Sebastian to apply 
for the post, apart from the Prince’s increasing indifference 
to the music of his Court, was that Leipzig offered better 
opportunities for the education of his elder sons, who 
were now getting big. For himself, there were certain 
drawbacks, as he said in a letter he wrote after he was at 
Leipzig to his old friend, Georg Erdmann—who had been 
at the convent school at Liineberg with him, and who was 
then in Russia. He read some of this letter aloud to me 
before he despatched it, for he usually shared his letters 
with me, as he did everything else, and naturally I always 


[ 66 | 


ram CTH REE 


obtained his approval before I indulged in epistolary 
correspondence. He told Herr Erdmann the reasons for 
his leaving Céthen where he had purposed to spend the 
remaining years of his life, and said that at first it did not 
entirely suit him to become Cantor of the Thomas Schule 
after having been Capellmeister to the Court of Céthen, 
but that having thought over the matter for the quarter of 
a year and considering the advantage to his sons, he ven- 
tured in the name of God to make the change. 


[ 67 ] 











PART IV 


IT is a strange thing moving to a new place and settling 
in under a new roof—how little one can foresee what is 
going to befall one under that roof of good and ill, of sad 
and happy. Both birth and death came to us in the Can- 
tor’s House at Leipzig, the birth of many children, the 
death of so many of them, and that death which has left 
the world so empty to me, Sebastian’s own. 

When we arrived in Leipzig in the last week of May in 
the year of our Lord 1723, with all our belongings and 
our young family, and drew up before the door of the 
Cantor’s House, Sebastian jumped down first and insisted, 
in the old German fashion, on lifting me over the threshold 
of my new home. “Thou are not much more than a bride,” 
he said, as he kissed me in the entrance way. And behind 
us came his sweet daughter Dorothea, bearing in her 
arms the infant Christiane. He saw my look—how quick 
he always was!—‘Well,’ he said, with his dear big 
laugh, “thou wilt always be my bride, even though thou 
have twenty babies!” And I thank the good God I can 
say that through all our nearly thirty years of marriage he 
was always lover to me as well as husband. He never 
seemed to see when I got old and my cheeks were wrinkled 
and my hair had silver patches in it. The only thing he 
once said about it was, “Thy hair used to be sunlight, it 
is now moonshine—which is a much better light for a pair 
of young lovers like us!” 


[ 72 ] 


PART FOUR 


Small wonder that I loved him so much and waited on 
his looks and words, storing them up in my heart. As 
Caspar said, there is not much I have forgotten—1t is often 
the tiniest things stay longest in a woman’s memory, and 
maybe my last thought and recollection of him before I 
leave this world will not be of my wedding day or of the 
birth of my first child, or even of his own dying, but that 
evening when he played a fugue, imprisoning me within 
his arm, or his lifting me over the threshold of my new 
home at Leipzig. 

The Cantor’s House was part of the Thomas Schule, 
joined on the side, two stories only high, and under the 
shadow of St. Thomas’s Church. It was nice and com- 
fortable, but when we had been there eight years and our 
family had considerably increased, it really became too 
small for our needs, and we moved for a time to the House 
of the Windmill while a story was added to the Cantor’s 
residence. ‘This addition gave us, among other rooms, a 
most pleasant new music-room, from which a passage led 
to the big schoolroom of the Thomas Schule, a very con- 
venient arrangement for Sebastian. 

Before finally being made Cantor, Sebastian had to 
appear before the Leipzig Council in the Council Chamber 
and take the vow of faithful and diligent service. He had to 
promise to fulfil the clauses in the contract which I here 
copy out, asit was an important document inSebastian’slife: 


1. That I will encourage the boys by a good example to 
live and comport themselves in a sober and modest manner. 
I will attend the schools diligently, and teach the boys 
conscientiously. 

2. I will do my best to bring the music in both chief 
Churches of this town mto good repute, 


[ 72 ] 


PART FOUR 


3. To show all proper respect and obedience to their 
Worships theCouncil, and domy best to protect and imcrease 
their honour and reputation in all places. Moreover, if a 
member of the Council desires to have the boys for a con- 
cert, to allow them to atiend without hesitation; but 
beyond that never to allow them to go into the country for 
funerals or weddings without the knowledge and consent of 
the Burgomaster and of the Principals of the Schule. 
| 4. To give due submission to all orders given by the 
Inspectors and Principals of the Schule in the name of the 
Worshipful Council. 

5. Lo accept no boys in the Schule who are not already 
grounded in the elements of music or do not show sufficient 
aptitude to benefit by musical instruction; nor to do so 
without the knowledge and agreement of the Principals and 
Inspectors. 

6. In order to save the Churches from needless expense, 
to instruct the boys diligently in singing as well as in in- 
strumental music. 

4. In order to preserve order in the Churches to arrange 
the music in such a way that it is not too lengthy, and, 
moreover, take care that it is not operatic in character, 
but may rather encourage a devotional attitude im the 
hearers. 

8. Supply the new Church with good scholars. 

9. To be kindly and circumspect in my treatment of the 
boys, and in cases of disobedience to be moderate in my 
punishment, or else report to the proper quarter. 

1o. To teach in the Schule and perform any other 
duties of my position in a conscientious manner. 

11. To arrange for a competent person to teach any- 
thing I am unable to undertake myself, without putting the 
Schule or the Council to any expense. 


[ 73 ] 


PART FOUR 


12. Not to leave the town without the Burgomaster’s 
permission. 

13. In the case of funeral processions to keep close to the 
boys, so far as 1s possible, m the usual manner. 

14. To accept no office in the University without the 
agreement of the Council. 

And I hereby contract and engage myself faithfully to 
perform all these duties, under pain of losing my position 
if I act against it, and in witness thereof I have signed this 
contract with my own hand and confirmed the same with 
my seal. 


It will be seen from this document that there were 
certain drawbacks in freedom and dignity in becoming 
Cantor at Leipzig after having been Capellmeister to the 
Court of Céthen. 

But he had given his serious consideration to the 
question and made his choice—which, as it proved, was 
to be for the rest of his lifetime. He was inducted into his 
office as Cantor of the St. Thomas’s Schule on the morning 
of Monday, the thirty-first of May 1723, at nine of the 
clock—and so began his long labours at Leipzig. He hada 
deal to do in his post as Cantor, and some of his work was 
not very congenial to his nature, as teaching the Thomaner 
boys Latin, but he was rejoiced to get back to a good and 
powerful Organ. We had not been in our new home an 
hour, and there was everything to be done so that we 
might even sleep that night, when he came to me, saying, 
“Come with me, Magdalena, I would show thee the 
Organ.” I had not been in Leipzig before we came there to 
live, owing to inability to leave the young infant at Cothen, 
and I was running round my new house trying to see how 
it had best be arranged, when the dear husband came and 


[ 74 ] 


PART FOUR 


demanded I should go and look at his Organ. And I knew 
—Heaven forgive me for the thought so mundane!—that 
if he was taken with the mood to play it I would not get 
back to my household tasks for a considerable time. Fora 
moment I hesitated and hung back, feeling it was not 
quite the hour for Organs, but he seized my hand, ‘‘ Come,” 
he said, impatiently, ‘‘thou canst see the Church is but 
next door.” So I went, and I sat on the bench by his side 
while he pulled out stops and filled all the air with lovely 
music, and I forgot for a while tke beds unmade and the 
house in disorder. Sebastian with his music could make 
me forget most things of this world when he chose. How 
well I was to know St. Thomas’s Church in the years to 
come, and what glorious music of the Cantor’s was to be 
madethere. But that was the first time I saw it and heard 
the Organ, all hurried and unprepared as I was. ‘There 
really were two Organs in St. Thomas’s, a little Organ over 
the choir, which was very old, having been built in 14809, 
and the big Organ on which Sebastian played to me, and 
which had been prepared and put into good order two 
years before he became Cantor. But the finest Organ of all 
was that in the University Church, with its twelve stops 
each to the Brustwerk and Unter-Clavier and fourteen 
stops to the Oberwerk. This was the Organ on which 
Sebastian often played when he played for his own 
pleasure or that of his friends and pupils. It was a new 
Organ, only having been completed while Sebastian was at 
Céthen, and from there he had been invited over to try it 
and report upon it, little imagining at that time how often 
his own hands would play upon those manuals. In his 
report he complained that the management of the Organ 
ought to be somewhat easier, that the keys had too great a 
fall, and that some of the lowest pipes spoke too roughly 


[75 ] 


PART FOUR 


and harshly, instead of with that pure and firm tone he so 
loved—but, indeed, there were no defects to be heard in 
this or any other Organ when he played uponit. His skill 
and tenderness with the most decayed old instruments were 
such that it was as if the Organs loved him, renewed their 
prime under his wonderful hands, and gave him their 
sweetest and their best. 

Our life at Leipzig had to be regulated according to the 
rules of the Thomas Schule, and Sebastian was not to 
leave the town without obtaining permission for his 
absence from the Burgomaster. At first I could not help 
missing the greater freedom of Céthen, where we had only 
to consider pleasing our Prince, whose nature was so kind 
and condescending. Iwas, I must confess, a little afraid of 
the Leipzig ladies and of the learned and aged Rector. The 
Cantor ranked after the Rector and Conductor of the 
Thomas Schule, with the principal Latin master, as the 
four superior masters. It was Sebastian’s duty, as Cantor, 
to give the boys singing lessons, and certain lessons in the 
Latin tongue—a portion of his work never very congenial 
to him, for though himself an able Latinist he had not 
been accustomed to the teaching of that language, and 
later he paid one of his colleagues fifty thalers a year to 
relieve him of this duty, a sum we could indeed ill spare, 
but I always thought it well spent, as the Latin teachings 
really fretted his temper. Besides, many a scholar could 
teach Latin—who but Sebastian could write those Organ 
preludes or the Christmas cantatas? 

Besides these lessons and certain other supervisings, the 
Cantor had to take the boys to Church each Thursday 
morning at seven o’clock, to arrange the Church music and 
attend the rehearsals each Saturday afternoon, also to 
arrange the music of the choral processions at Michaelmas, 


[ 76 ] 


PART FOUR 


New Year, and on the days of St. Martin and St. Gregory. 
Besides this there was a motet or cantata performed each 
Sunday at the Thomas Church and the Nicolai Church, 
for which he was responsible, and he had to direct the 
music of the churches of St. John and St. Paul, also to 
look after their Organs. So it will be seen his hands were 
full enough, and though he was not the official organist at 
any of these four Leipzig churches, no one who knew 
Sebastian could doubt that many were the times when he 
himself took the organist’s seat and in the kind of music 
he loved best of all forgot the worries of the week past. 
After a time, as he became better known in Leipzig and 
the surrounding country, people would come knocking at 
our door and ask the Cantor if he could spare time to let 
them hear him play the Organ. Sebastian rarely refused if 
he thought love of music prompted the request and not 
just a trifling curiosity. On one occasion I opened the 
house door to find a very grand gentleman standing there 
who proffered his request. It appeared he was an English- 
man and a great lover of the Organ and had journeyed from 
Hamburg, where he was on business, on the rumour of 
Sebastian’s playing. He was most kind and courteous, and 
Sebastian liked him so well he played nearly two hours to 
him on the Organ, and then brought him back to share our 
dinner at noon. I was a little perturbed at this, as I had no 
warning and I could see without doubt he was accustomed 
to much finer entertainment than our simple German fare. 
But he seemed to enjoy everything we gave him, and after 
dinner, when he and Sebastian had each smoked a pipeful 
of tobacco, he very pressingly induced Sebastian to sit 
down at the clavichord where he improvised some charm- 
ing music which he afterwards wrote down and which we 
usually called the English Suites, because of our English 


[77] 


PART FOUR 


visitor and because Sebastian later adapted some of the 
movements from a book of Suites by Charles Dieupart, who 
lived in England and was known to our Englishman, who 
sent his compositions to Sebastian. We never saw him 
again, but he sent Sebastian a beautiful parcel of books 
and music, including the Dieupart Suites and a score of 
Handel’s, ‘‘in homage,” as he said, ‘‘to the Master of the 
Organ.” Sebastian had been much interested in what the 
Englishman had told him of Herr Handel in London. To 
me it has always seemed a somewhat strange exile to im- 
pose upon oneself, to leave our good Saxony for that bleak 
island, but of course we know the English are a rich 
nation and Herr Handel got much money. This English- 
man had several times heard Handel perform on the Organ 
in London at the big church (or is it cathedral?) of Saint 
Paul, and told us he was remarkably fine, which was one 
reason he was so eager as to make a journey to hear the 
only organist, who, so he had been told, was worthy to 
compare with “‘the Saxon” as they called him. But after 
listening to Sebastian he said to me with a courteous bow, 
“Frau Bach, if thou wilt permit me to say so, I believe, 
and I have heard many, there is no finer performer on 
the Organ than thy husband.” I made him a courtesy and 
replied, ‘‘I know it, sir.” Whereupon Sebastian burst out 
laughing, ‘“‘If thou were better acquainted with my wife, 
sir, thou wouldst realize that she has no critical judgment 
with regard to my performances, and believes me the 
most wonderful musician in Europe—is that not so, 
Magdalena?” he asked, patting my shoulder—I was 
sitting on a little stool at his feet, where I often sat to listen 
to his talk. The Englishman smiled: ‘That is as it should 
be, though, unhappily, great masters are not invariably 
appreciated in their own homes.” “Well,” said Sebastian, 


[ 78 | 


PART FOUR 


looking at me in his kind way, ‘‘and whose fault is that 
but their own? ‘They should choose their wives with more 
care and pious consideration.” 

This visit of the Englishman was but the forerunner of 
many visitors we were to have at Leipzig—more, it is true, 
towards the latter part of our life there, when hardly any 
lover of music would pass through the town without 
coming to visit Sebastian, who was ever of a hospitable 
disposition and most kindly inclined towards all who 
were genuinely interested in music. But even in our first 
years there his official position as Cantor brought him in 
contact with many more acquaintances than we had been in 
the habit of encountering in Céthen. And as I was proud 
of being the wife of Sebastian Bach, so I took pride that 
our house should do him credit by its cleanliness and order 
when strangers paid him their respects. We had a nice set 
of black leather chairs, and a small and a large pair of 
silver candlesticks, as well as six pinchbeck candlesticks, 
while my parents had bestowed upon me on my marriage 
a comely oaken chest, old and deeply carven, in which I 
kept my best bridal linen. But of all our household posses- 
sions the one naturally most cherished by me was the por- 
trait of Sebastian he had painted at my request at the time 
of our marriage. It was so skilfully limned, the painter’s 
pencil had caught the gravity and intentness of his look 
when he was thinking, when he looked at and through 
people and never saw they were there at all—sometimes 
at first this look used to frighten me a little, but soon I got 
to know it was the voice of music speaking in his mind 
made him look like that. The very line of his eyebrows the 
painter has caught and the curve of his mouth, so sensitive 
and kind, that went up at the corners when he laughed, 
and made me not afraid of him, when his eyes, sometimes, 


[ 79 | 


PART FOUR 


had it not been for that, might have made me just a little 
frightened. He was very determined looking, and one 
reason was that he had a strong chin which stuck outwards 
—his teeth met absolutely even, and most people’s teeth 
close with the lower ones inside the upper. It gave his face 
a different look to other people’s and made most of them 
appear hesitating beside him. 

This portrait was to me the pride of my Keeping-Room, 
and one day as I was polishing the frame Sebastian came 
up to me and said, “I am thinking of having something 
prettier to look at in this parlour.” “But thou couldst 
not,” I said in a hurry, without properly considering my 
words. Sebastian was always pleased when I blundered in 
this childish way, which I regrettably did quite often. “I 
never regarded myself as pretty before,” he said, laughing 
and pinching my ear, ‘“‘but at least I know someone 
prettier, and I intend to have a picture of her to look at 
whilst thou gazest upon yon handsome Cantor!” 

So of his goodness he had a portrait painted in oil 
colour of me by an Italian artist at that time in Leipzig, by 
name Cristoforri. Sebastian used to come in from the 
Thomas Schule and watch the progress of the painting, 
and say, “‘Nay, thou hast not got the colour of her cheek 
aright,” or ‘I like not the curve of the chin,” till one day 
the painter got a little vexed, and said, ‘Signor Bach, 1 
would not tell thee how to write a cantata, but as thou 
didst entrust me with the portrait of the Signora I would 
paint it in my own manner.” Sebastian laughed good- 
temperedly: “‘And so thou shalt,” he said, “but thou 
canst not understand the countenance of the Frau Cantor 
as I do.”’ However, when the portrait was finished, he was 
well pleased with it, and it hung on our wall beside his 
own, where for some time it rather abashed me to behold 


[ 80 ] 


PART FOUR 


it, for few dames in our rank of life have their portraits 
done in this way, and I could not but feel it as an extrava- 
gance. But asa signal mark of Sebastian’s approval and 
pleasure in me, I was truly proud and happy to behold 
that young woman, the Frau Cantor Bach, smiling beside 
her husband. 

A further sign of his kindness which he bestowed upon 
me about this time was another book of music, very hand- 
somely bound in green, on the cover of which he had 
written my name in gold and India ink and the date 1725. 
He told me we were to keep it together and that I was to 
transcribe in it such music as pleased me, while he himself 
enriched its pages with music he composed for my playing 
at the clavier—being at that time, under his patient and 
kind tuition, somewhat more advanced in skill than when 
he made for me my first Notebuchlein. Sometimes at the 
end of the day, when he had a little leisure from teaching 
and was in the mood, he would sit down at the big table - 
and drawing a candle to his elbow and taking up his quill, 
say, ‘‘Fetch hither thy green Notebook, Magdalena, I fear 
it has but dull old music in it thou art weary with playing. 
I will write thee a new piece for thy performance.” AndI 
would haste to fetch the book that its pages might receive 
the precious thing. How dear to me were those hours of 
the long autumn and winter evenings, when the children 
were safely tucked up asleep, and Sebastian and I sat 
down to copy music—our constant occupation and work, 
for there were always the parts of the Sunday cantatas to 
be written out. Two candles were lit between us—I always 
attended carefully to snuffing them, so that the flower of 
light should not be spoiled by that little black thorn of 
darkness—and we worked silently. I never spoke if I 
could help it, for often as he wrote out, in his beautiful 


[ 8x | 


PART FOUR 


rapid hand (his scores always had a look swift, eager, 
passionate to my eyes), the music of Buxtehede or Herr 
Hindel, whose compositions he greatly admired (though 
I thought them not comparable to his own, even though 
so full of merit), or sometimes made a copy of his own 
music for his pupils, inspiration would come upon him, 
and seizing some of the loose ruled sheets I had placed at 
his elbow he would write down some of that inexhaustible 
music which ever sang in his brain. 

He wrote some songs and chorales in my Notebuchlein, 
and one song which at first I could not even sing to him, it 
made my voice tremble so: 


If thou art with me, I would gladly go 
To death and to my rest. 

Ah, how contented would be my end 
If thy tender hands would close 

My faithful eyes. 


Ah, Sebastian, how good and loving you were to me! 

It always pleased him to pretend he could not write a 
love song unless it were about me. “And so,” he said one 
day, taking me on his knee, “this little Frau of mine has 
spoiled for me all the pretty little sighing songs of parted 
lovers, all the melancholy ballads that make Court ladies 
weep—how can a comfortable Cantor write them about 
the wife who sits upon his knee? I shall have to go back- 
wards and pretend thy parents would not let us marry, 
for I have an air in my mind which demands a sad verse 
or two.” And the next day he brought a song, so lovely a 
song, for me to sing to him, which was written to these 
words: 


[ 82 | 


PART FOUR 


If thou wilt grant thy heart to me 
Then do it secretly, 

So that the thoughts within us 
Unknown to all may be; 

Our love must lie well hidden 

In the inmost heart of each; 

Lock im thy breast tis deepest joys 
Secure from strangers’ reach. 


Be watchful and keep silent 
For even walls have ears; 
Love deep within thy bosom 
Beiray no hopes or fears; 

Let none suspect thy secret 
Thy duty’s to deceive, 

It 1s enough that thou, my life, 
Cans’t my true love perceive. 


I sometimes think how rarely privileged I have been, 
out of all the people in this world, that the music Sebastian 
wrote from the year of our marriage to his death is all 
woven into the very texture of my life and means to me 
what it can never mean to any other. I have seen it come 
to the birth, I have read it before any eye but its creator’s 
had seen it, and Sebastian himself has talked to me about 
it and explained the things beyond my understanding. How 
many times have I sat in the room with him, still and 
hushed as a mouse, sewing silently at the family mending, 
while he wrote with a speed as though God were telling 
him every note, waiting for the moment when he would 
look up, hold out his arm and say, “‘Come here, Magda- 
lena.” And then he would show me what he had written. 
Sometimes, though this was not very often, the music 


[ 83 ] 


PART FOUR 


would not come. He would write a dozen bars, and then 
with a guttural sound in his throat, dash his quill through 
them. He would drop his head into his hands and sit very 
still, sometimes for a long time, sometimes but a short 
time, and then raise his head and say with a little smile 
at me: “Why, of course, it goes this way,” and begin to 
write. As Friedemann grew older and became such a good 
musician, and also as my hands were fuller with the cares 
of the household and the children, some of my cherished 
privileges had to be yielded to him, and indeed he became 
his father’s closest musical companion. But Sebastian gave 
me so much that I had no cause for repinings, and he 
never wrote any music without showing it to me and 
letting me share his thought in it. So I have good reason 
for feeling that out of all the women in this world I have 
been most highly favoured in that I have lived so closely 
with a mind so wonderful as Sebastian’s, and seen his 
music at its very inception and creation. I do not profess 
that I could understand all his music—indeed, I would 
have needed to be as big as he himself was to do so—but 
all the years I lived with him, all the lessons, both direct 
and indirect he gave me, all the incessant talk and thought 
of music in our house, added to my own natural love for 
it, gave me in the end some grasp and understanding of 
the greatness of the music my husband was continually 
creating. Now that he is dead people have forgotten about 
him, his music is rarely heard, and his sons, Friedemann 
and Emanuel, seem much more thought of than their 
father in this day, but I cannot believe it always will be 
so. To me it always seemed that one entered a different 
world in hismusic—serene, outside, above all trouble. At 
the heart of him continued this centre of peace and beauty. 
And when, if I felt, as I sometimes did, over-burdened 


[ 84 ] 


PART FOUR 


with small worries, so many young children and never 
quite enough thalers, so many things to do and to see done, 
the baking and the washing and the spinning, if I could 
only snatch a little time to hear him play, especially on the 
Organ, or to hear some cantata or motet of his sung, I 
could get there too—I mean to that place of peace and 
beauty. It was only he who could take me there. The 
music of Herr Handel or Herr Pachelbel and others, is 
very beautiful, but it does not come from the same country 
as my Sebastian’s. Perhaps I feel that partly because I love 
him—but, indeed, in some manner, though I cannot ex- 
plain it, I feel as if there is a real difference between his 
music and the music of all the others. 

Our first years at Leipzig were not altogether easy. The 
musical state of things at the Thomas Schule and Church 
was very bad, and the people in authority were hard to 
move to any reformation, and many a time after urging 
them to most necessary changes and meeting with rebuffs 
and indifference, Sebastian would come home and drop- 
ping into his chair take me on his knee and laying his 
cheek against my shoulder, say, ‘Well, better peace at 
home and storms outside, than the other way about, is it 
not, Magdalena?” But he was fretted and harassed, and 
it made me sad to see him who should have been left in 
quietude to make his music bothered with quarrels about 
unruly boys, and handicapped in his musical performances 
because the Council would not replace broken and worn- 
out instruments, and because everybody seemed to care so 
much more about the opera than about Church music, and 
all the best singers went to the Musical Union, and he was 
left with ragged, rebellious boys whose voices were ruined 
with street singing in all sorts of weather. But Sebastian, 
as I have said, had his share of the Bach obstinacy, and 


[ 85 ] 


PART FOUR 


though he was troubled and often angered, he never gave 
up his struggle for good music and his proper rights as 
Cantor of the Thomas Schule. But things were very diffi- 
cult, especially at the beginning. ‘There was not enough 
sleeping room for the boys, they were too much crowded 
together and often swept by illness of one sort and another, 
so that I frequently trembled for my young children and 
especially for Sebastian, who was among the boys—though, 
owing no doubt to the efficacy of a cordial prepared accord- 
ing to the method of my great-aunt at Hamburg, who was 
very notable at medicines, and a careful closing of our 
windows when the air was pestilent, we escaped contracting 
any serious illness. 

The lowest classes of the Thomas Schule had boys of a 
rough and unruly character, who went about the town 
barefoot and begging, brawling and making trouble, 
especially at the times of the Fairs at Easter, Michaelmas, 
and New Year, when the whole school has a week’s holiday, 
and the town is always crowded with merchants and many 
sorts of vagabonds. I was always a little glad when Fair 
times were done, though of course it gave to me and all 
housewives an opportunity to replenish our household 
needs, and at every Fair my dear Sebastian usually came 
home with a book under his arm to add to that library of 
his he so much valued and read in at all his leisure. In this 
way he acquired all the works of Luther. 

The children, of course, loved the Fairs, and were in a 
great excitement as each came round, and much ado IJ had 
to keep the youngest ones from being lost in the crowds, 
and the bigger ones from blowing their red wooden trum- 
pets all day long to the distraction of their father’s ear. 
Not, as he said on one occasion when I was reproving one 
of the children for a too harsh and persistent use of this 


[ 86 ] 


PART FOUR 
| 


cherished trumpet, that its note was much more distressing 
to him than the hoarse and croaking notes of the boys of 
the choirs, whose voices were so often ruined before 
they had reached the most moderate proficiency by run- 
ning singing about the streets at nights with their flaming 
torches in their Perambulations, not to speak of the more 
decorous singing processions at important weddings and 
funerals, where proper behaviour was assured by the 
presence of their Cantor at their head—though he could 
not guard their voices from the harm done by singing in 
snowy or pouring weather. Sometimes they were so hoarse 
that, as he said, he might as well have taken out a company 
of crows. It may easily be imagined how disturbing this 
was to him who wrote cantatas and motets of such beauty 
and had only such uncouth voices to perform them on so 
many occasions—for he did not hold with the Council of 
the Schule, that, after the glory of God, the principal end 
of the singing classes was to promote the digestion of the 
scholars. Herr Gesner even proposed that the scholars’ 
dinner-hour should be altered from ten to eleven of the 
clock in order that the singing lesson should immediately 
follow the meal, as that was the most healthy form of 
exercise after eating. Which shows a little to how low an 
estimate music had sunk in the Thomas Schule. It was 
indeed true enough, as the old Rector Ernesti confessed, 
that in “the Chorus musicus there is more of evil to be 
- guarded against than of good to be hoped for.” 

After he had been Cantor a few years, Sebastian was 
constrained to draw up a memorial and report on the state 
of music in the Thomas Schule, which he presented to the 
Council, and in which he said it was the minimum neces- 
sity that each of the choirs for the three principal churches 
of St. Thomas, St. Nicholas and the New Church, should 


Gcyae 


PART FOUR 


possess at least three trebles, three alti, three tenors and 
three basses, so that if any fail, which is a thing that often 
happened, particularly in inclement seasons of the year, 
as can be proved by the recipes sent from the school of 
medicine to the dispensary, a motet may be sung with two 
voices at the least to each part. Of the instrumentalists he 
said diffidence prevented him from speaking truly of their 
quality and musical knowledge, but it must be considered 
that they are partly inefficient and partly not in such good 
practice as they ought to be. ‘It must be noticed,” he 
went on, ‘‘that the former practice of accepting so many 
boys who were not talented and had no aptitude for music 
has necessarily resulted in a falling-off and deterioration of 
the musical standard. For it may be readily understood 
that a boy who is totally ignorant of music and cannot 
even manage to sing a second part can have no musical 
gift, and consequently can never be of any use from a 
musical point of view. And even those who come to the 
Schule grounded in a few principles of music, cannot be 
of use as quickly as they should be. For time does not 
allow of them receiving preliminary training for a year 
until they are skilled enough to make use of; on the con- 
trary, they are distributed among the choirs as soon as 
they are admitted, and they must at least be well grounded 
in time and tune if they are to be used in the Church ser- 
vices. Now if a few of those who have achieved something 
in music are taken away every year from the Schule, and 
their places filled by others, of whom some are not yet 
fit for use and most are totally ignorant, it is obvious that 
the choirs must deteriorate. It is notorious that my pre- 
decessors, Herren Schelle and Kuhnau, were obliged to 
call in the assistance of the students when they wanted to 
give a musical performance that should be complete and 


[ 88 | 


PART FOUR 


melodious.”” ‘Then he complained how money had been 
withheld from him and the choir, and stated how differently 
musicians were paid and treated in Dresden. ‘It must 
follow,” he went on, ‘‘that if those musicians are saved 
from anxiety about their maintenance, and relieved from 
all material worries, and if, furthermore, each man is only 
expected to play one instrument, the result must be 
admirable and excellent performances. The conclusion is 
easily reached, that by losing the perquisites I shall be 
unable to raise the standard of the music. Finally I am 
obliged to depend on the number of the present scholars, 
in order to give each one his chance of attaining proficiency 
in music, and then leave to more mature consideration 
whether the music can be carried on any further under 
such circumstances, or whether anything can be done to 
cope with its manifold deterioration.” 

Moreover, he found the Organs of the different churches 
under his direction belaboured by first one pair and then 
another of unwashed and unskilled hands—though it must 
be admitted that Herr Gorner, the organist of the New 
Church and of St. Thomas’s was not an entirely unskilled 
musician, though his compositions were very confused and 
disorderly, it being said of him (Sebastian did not say this 
himself, but I heard him repeat it with a certain relish) 
that rules of composition were things he daily dispensed 
with, as he did not know them. He was also extremely con- 
ceited and jealous of Sebastian’s large powers, against 
which he had the ignorance to set his own small ones, and 
employed his tongue in a spiteful manner to Sebastian’s 
detraction. It took him a long time to forget the rehearsal 
of a cantata, when he, playing the continuo on the organ, 
made so many mistakes that Sebastian flew into a rage and, 
snatching off his wig, flung it at Gérner’s head, telling him 


[ 89 ] 


PART FOUR 


he would have done better to be a cobbler than an organist. 
Sebastian did not often lose control of his temper: when he 
did there was no doubt about it. 

So it will be seen that there were difficulties and dis- 
agreeables in our first years at the Thomas Schule. But 
whatever troubles there were took no seat upon our 
hearth, they belonged outside, and there Sebastian left 
them when he sat down to the clavichord or the viola in 
his own home. We made much music, on all occasions of . 
leisure and little festival gatherings, and the winter 
evenings were sweet with it, while the stove crackled 
cheerily and kept us from the cold outside, and the candles 
cast their pleasant light on the score of quartet or cantata. 
Many of Sebastian’s musical friends came in hugging a 
violin or an oboe under their arms, but even in our own 
home circle we could make up a concert, without any 
outside helping. Sebastian’s eldest daughter, Katharina 
Dorothea, sang sweetly and well, and my voice was, as he 
told a friend of his, “a very clear soprano.” Friedemann 
and Emanuel had musical gifts of a high order, as their 
mature lives were to show, and the whole lot of us, down 
almost to the latest baby, could read most music at sight 
without any difficulty. As Sebastian once said proudly of 
his children, they were all born musicians. Indeed, it 
would have been strange were they not so, considering he 
was their father and considering the whole atmosphere of 
our home, which was impregnated with music. ‘The first 
thing they heard was music, the first things they saw were 
musical instruments: they would play in and out of the 
legs of clavichord and harpsichord (the harpsichord pedals 
were things of perpetual mystery and amusement to our 
infants) on the floor till they could pull themselves up to 
the level of the keys, and with eyes round with satisfaction, 


[ 90 ] 


PART FOUR 


strike the notes with chubby fingers and the conviction 
that now at last they were doing what their father did. It 
would have been strange had they not been musicians. 

Our house was full of musical instruments in the latter 
days. Sebastian loved them and could never have too 
many of them. When he died he possessed a clavier and 
four clavecin, two lute-harpsichords and a little spinet, two 
violins, three violas, two violoncellos, one bass viol, one 
viol da gamba, one lute, and a piccolo, and all these he had 
collected slowly as he could afford to buy them, for he 
never went into debt for anything, however much desired. 
Besides these instruments he had, during his lifetime, 
bestowed upon his youngest son, Johann Christian, three 
claviers with pedal—which gift at the time of his death 
caused a little feeling among the other sons, who were in- 
clined to dispute Christian’s statement, but were unable 
to carry their opposition far, as both I and our daughter, 
Frau Altnikol and her husband, knew of the gifts having 
been bestowed by Sebastian. 

Of all keyed instruments, after the Organ, Sebastian was 
most fond of the clavichord, preferring it to the harpsi- 
chord, owing to its sensitive response to the player and the 
way it taught a delicate touch, as too heavy a pressure on 
the key slightly sharpened the note. ‘‘Thou playest too 
hard,” he said one day, coming in when Emanuel was, 
practising, “thou art as sharp as a scolding woman!” 
Emanuel took this rebuke to heart and became notable, 
like his father, for the beauty of his touch. In later years 
he wrote an essay on the correct manner of playing on the 
clavier, in which he said, ‘“‘Some people there are who 
play the clavier as if their fingers were stuck together, 
their touch is so deliberate, and they keep the keys down 
so long; while others, attempting to avoid this mistake, 


[ 91 J 


PART FOUR 


play too crisply, as if the keys scorched their fingers.” But 
Sebastian’s sons and pupils had only to model themselves 
on him to avoid all defects and attain to a beautiful 
manner of playing. It was his rule that a tranquil position 
of the hands was essential in clavichord playing, in order 
to preserve the truth of intonation; his hands scarcely 
seemed to move when playing, except as they glided up 
and down the keyboard, and he specially valued the bebung 
effect, the power of sustaining the tone by giving a fresh 
pressure to the note without quitting the key. The sensi- 
tive and tender quality of the clavichord appealed to the 
sensitive musical nature of Sebastian, and he liked the 
description someone applied to this instrument as “the 
comfort of the sufferer and the sympathizing friend of 
cheerfulness.”” Even in our bedchamber there was a 
clavichord, and I have known him rise up at midnight 
and, wrapping an old cloak about him, play very softly for 
an hour or more. It never disturbed the sleeping children, 
only sweetened their dreams—and as for me, I used to love 
lying there, listening to him playing in the dark, hushed 
house: sometimes the moonlight shone on him through 
the casement. It was like a foretaste of heaven, for at night 
he always played very peaceful music, and I confess, to 
my shame, that there were times when, soothed by the 
tender melodies that flowed from his fingers, I was asleep 
before he came back to bed. 

All musical instruments interested Sebastian, from a 
piccolo to the Organ, and he was constantly thinking how 
they might be improved and defects taken away so that 
more beauty might be obtained from them. I grew quite 
learned myself on the subject, for he would often explain 
his ideas to my interested ear, and show me the interiors 
of instruments when he was tuning or experimenting with 


[ 92 ] 


PART FOUR 


them. He would never let another adjust the quill plec- 
trums of his harpsichord but himself, and always insisted 
that for his own satisfaction his own hand must perform 
this task. I have said how he invented a five-stringed viol 
da gamba, and the lute-harpsichord was planned by him 
and constructed under his direction by the organ builder, 
Zacharias Hildebrand. It had a greater duration of tone 
than the harpsichord, owing to gut as well as metal strings 
and an arrangement of dampers, which I do not under- 
stand quite clearly enough to explain—but Sebastian 
wished to remedy or modify the brief resonance of the 
harpsichord, which made legato playing and smooth 
singing passages impossible on that instrument. His 
friend, Herr Silbermann—a strange, quarrelsome, clever 
man and a great Organ builder—began making instru- 
ments which he called forte-pianos, in which Sebastian was 
much interested. At Silbermann’s request he played on 
one of the earliest of these instruments and found much 
promise in it, but was dissatisfied with the hammer-action 
and the heaviness of the touch, also with the weakness of 
the upper range of notes. “Thou must do better than this,”’ 
he said to Silbermann, “there is the making of a goodly 
tree in this acorn, but it needs to grow.” ‘Which cannot 
be said of thy conceit!” exclaimed Silbermann, angrily— 
he was of a violent temper and uncouth, he had run very | 
wild in his youth—“ Here have I been toiling at this thing 
for long periods, and then thou sittest down and puttest 
thy white Capellmeister’s hands on the keys and sayest it 
is wrong!” He was quite exploding with annoyance. 
Sebastian’s own temper could be hot upon occasion, but 
he looked very patiently at Silbermann and said, “But 
it is wrong, and thou knowest it is wrong, that is why thou 
artso angry. Come, do not let us quarrel over a matter of 


[ 93 ] 


PART FOUR 


music. Thou who canst build such noble Organs canst 
make a better matter of this hammer-clavier ” and he 
pointed out certain defects which needs must be overcome. 
Siloermann listened sulkily for a few minutes and then 
went away, saying, “Truly thou art a marvellous genius 
and there is nothing thou dost not know!”’ banging the 
door shut after him. I was very shocked and indignant that 
anyone should speak to Sebastian so, but he smiled at me 
quite unruffled and said, ‘‘He is unhappy because he has 
not yet made the instrument what he knows it ought to be 
—I understand of a certainty how he feels.” “But he ~ 
need not be rude to thee, Sebastian,” I protested. “That 
is of no moment, so long as he gets the clavier right,” was 
his answer. And after working for a long period upon his 
invention, Silbermann conquered his difficulties and at 
length invited Sebastian (after having abstained from all 
communication with him) to try the improved instrument. 
Sebastian went with eager interest and played and was 
delighted. Silbermann stood by listening and when he 
heard Sebastian’s warm words of praise his rugged face 
broke up into a pleased smile, “Thou art the master of all 
musicians, and I knew until I had satisfied thee my work 
was no good, but it has been a hard task to fulfil all thou 
set me, nevertheless.” 

Near the end of his life Sebastian played on the Sil- 
bermann pianos that the King had at Potsdam, and for 
Silbermann’s Organs he had a great admiration, though 
quite early in his career he had got cross with Silber- 
mann over an Organ which it was proposed to build and 
which he told Silbermann must have the low CC sharp on 
manual and pedal, and be tuned to equal temperament. 
Silbermann refused to do either of these things and so 
Sebastian said, “‘Then we can have no Organ from thee.” 





[ 94 | 


PART FOUR 


But in spite of these disagreements they respected each 
other: Gottfried Silbermann recognized Sebastian’s 
genius, and Sebastian always regarded Silbermann as a 
great Organ builder. No one, he maintained, could build 
a true Organ who had not some special gift from God—it 
was not like building a cabinet or even a harpsichord, a 
little of a musician’s soul must be imprisoned within the 
pipes before they could speak fitly and well. If love did 
not make the Organ it would never really live. And Silber- 
mann certainly loved his Organs, and put more into them 
than was ever paid him in money. ‘That was why Sebastian 
liked him and his instruments and minded little his rough 
speeches and his intractable ways. 

But though Sebastian was not perturbed by the some- 
what quarrelsome ways of Silbermann because he knew 
his heart was good and his love and knowledge of music 
deep and sincere, he was greatly upset by the miserable 
disputes and disagreements into which he was forced by 
the Council of the Thomas Schule. It seemed as though 
they would have him make bricks without straw, they did 
not support his proper authority, they withheld certain 
moneys to which he was entitled and put it out of his 
power to pay for the musical assistance he needed; for as 
he said in a report to the Council, the little perquisites 
which used in former times to fall to the Chorus musicus | 
had been wholly withdrawn and in consequence their 
willingness had also disappeared, “for who will labour in 
vain, or give his services for no reward?” In innumerable 
ways they made his life needlessly difficult, and when he, 
in his direct manner said what he thought of their way of 
behaving they called him ‘‘incorrigible,” and said that he 
not only “did nothing, but would not give any explana- 
tion.” And through all this troublesome time Sebastian 


[95 ] 


PART FOUR 


was writing music for performance at St. Thomas’s and 
the other Leipzig churches such as had not been known 
before in Germany. Indeed, it was too good for them, too 
high above their dull wits—only a few musicians here and 
there really understood and loved it. But the strain of this 
life was too great for Sebastian’s spirit, so sensitive under 
all his outward solidity, and he seriously contemplated 
leaving Leipzig and seeking his fortunes in a more peaceful 
atmosphere. Not quite knowing where to go, he wrote to 
the old friend of his youth, Georg Erdmann, who had now 
become something of a great personage in Russia, asking 
him if he could assist him to a suitable employment. ‘This 
letter, with his usual consideration, he showed to me before 
dispatching, and I must admit the thought of removing 
our home and family to Russia caused me a certain dis- 
comfort of the heart, it seeming a country so remote and 
vast and almost heathen, so different from our good 
Saxony, but, of course, had it been needful for Sebastian 
to go thither it would have been needful for me to show no 
repining. And after all what was Saxony to me, what was 
the whole world, compared with Sebastian? A woman’s 
home is where her husband and children are. 

In this letter he said that his appointment as Cantor to 
the Thomas Schule had not proved so advantageous as it 
had been described to him, that many of the fees belonging 
to it had been reduced or stopped, that Leipzig was very 
expensive to live in, as in Thuringia he could do better 
with four hundred thalers than with twice as many in 
Leipzig owing to the excessive cost of living. But the thing 
that more than all made his life as Cantor difficult, as he 
said in this letter, was that the authorities were very 
strange folks, with small love for music, so that he lived 
under almost constant vexation, jealousy, and persecution, 


[ 96 | 


PART FOUR 


to the extent that he felt compelled to seek, with God’s 
assistance, his fortune elsewhere. 

But when things had reached this pitch of discomfort 
they became easier, on the death of the old Rector, Herr 
Ernesti, and the appointment to that post of Sebastian’s 
old Weimar friend, Herr Gesner. I will not forget his 
pleased face when he came to tell me of Gesner’s appoint- 
ment—‘‘ Now, Magdalena, we shall find that many things 
will be easier.” And I kissed him thankfully, and felt very 
glad, for it not only greatly disturbed my heart to see him 
so harassed, but I knew it injured his music, and that, I 
felt, was a very serious matter, as I knew God had sent 
him to make music for this troubled world, and if the 
world troubled him so that he could not make this music 
then that would be a very ill thing. 

The new Rector, though of such delicate health he had 
to be carried to and from the Schule in a chair, was full of 
energy and enthusiasm and goodness. ‘Though a learned 
scholar he was most kindly in heart, and I, indeed, was 
filled with respectful gratitude towards him, as he under- 
stood and appreciated Sebastian. ‘There grew up a great 
friendship—or rather it was renewed and increased—be- 
tween the Rector and the Cantor, and no longer were the 
Council so difficult about the music and about supplying, 
the necessary scores and other matters required by Sebas- 
tian. In particular he desired for the choir a fine collection 
of motetts and responses that was then to be had, and as 
the Rector interested himself in the matter he obtained 
them. Also, Herr Gesner would often look in on Sebastian 
when he was giving a singing lesson to the boys, and listen 
with pleasant encouragements to the practisings—a matter 
in which other Rectors had little concerned themselves. In 
all possible ways he showed the other masters and the 


[ 97 ] 


PART FOUR 


Council in what honour and friendship he held the Cantor 
and his music. 

I was greatly pleased because one day the Rector came 
to me with some manuscript in his hand, and said in his 
courtly and yet friendly way, ‘‘Dame Bach, canst thou 
spare me a little leisure to listen to a small thing I have 
written about thy honoured husband?” I requested him 
to be seated and gave him all my attention while he told 
me that he was editing a learned book in Latin »y one 
called, if I remember rightly, Quintilianus. And in this 
book somebody named Fabius remarks on the many-sided 
capacity of a man who plays the lyre, and at the same time 
sings and marks time with his foot. “All this,” wrote 
Rector Gesner (I asked and obtained his permission to 
copy out this piece for my own delectation), “All this, my 
dear Fabius, you would consider very trivial could you 
but rise from the dead and hear Bach: how he, with both 
hands, and using all his fingers, either on a keyboard, 
which seems to consist of many lyres in one, or on the 
instrument of instruments, the Organ, of which the in- 
numerable pipes are made to sound by means of bellows; 
here with his hands, and there with the utmost celerity with 
his feet, elicits many of the most various yet harmonious 
sounds: I say, could you but see him, how he achieves 
what a number of your lyre-players and six hundred flute- 
players could never achieve, presiding over thirty or forty 
performers all at once, recalling this one bya nod, another 
by a stamp of the foot, another with a warning finger, 
keeping time and tune; while high notes are given out 
by some, deep tones by others, and notes between 
them by others. Great admirer as I am of antiquity in other 
respects, yet I am of the opinion that my one Bach, 
and whosoever that may chance to be that resembles 


[ 98 ] 


FAK LOL OUR 


him, unites in himself many Orpheuses, and twenty 
Arions.” 

It may be understood what pleasure that passage gave 
to me, and how many times I read it, till I knew it by heart 
and could tell it to such of our children as were old enough 
to understand it. ‘Though not a trained musician himself, 
which made it the more remarkable, Rector Gesner had 
most ably set forth the manner of Sebastian’s way of con- 
ducting a cantata or instrumental concert. According to 
circumstances he would sometimes, especially if he had a 
large number of singers and instrumentalists to control, 
beat the time with a roll of music in his hand, or, taking 
his seat at the harpsichord or clavier, partly set the time 
by his own playing and partly by beating it with one hand 
while the other was employed on the instrument. His son 
Emanuel said of him, “He was very accurate in con- 
ducting, and in time, which he generally took at a very 
lively pace, he was always sure.”’ Many of the rehearsals 
of the Church music took place in our house, as there was 
no harpsichord in the Thomas Schule, though there was 
one in the Organ loft at St. Thomas’s, but in the winter 
it was more comfortable to have the rehearsals at home, 
and so many a time I have seen Sebastian conducting and 
teaching the makers of music, as the Herr Rector describes 
it. He was a most inspiring leader, seeming all compact of ' 
the music, his hands looking as though they drew it from 
the air, and his face full of happiness when things were 
going well—but not a single false note or dragged tempo 
was missed by his keen ear, and he never was contented 
till the music, all the voices, all the instruments, flowed as 
one harmonious stream in perfect tune and pitch, and to 
attain that harmony and unity meant much hard work for 
him and for those under his direction. But—except he 


[99]. 


PART FOUR 


were dealing with wilful and thick-headed boys—he had 
the power of inspiring enthusiasm and devotion in all 
those who had any feeling for music and any knowledge of 
it, and they worked willingly and hard to obtain his ap- 
proval. As he himself said, “It is well known that those 
among the students who are lovers of music are always 
ready and willing with their offers of assistance. I, for my 
own part, have never had with the students any unpleasant- 
ness, they are wont to help me in both instrumental and 
vocal music without hesitation, and do so to this hour, 
freely and without payment.” 

He was brought into still closer contact with those who 
had a care for music when, in the year 1729, he became 
Director of the famous Musical Union founded by Herr 
Telemann. This Union, under his guidance, gave very 
beautiful musical performances once a week, in the time 
of summer on Wednesday afternoons from four o’clock 
to six o’clock in the Zimmermann Garden in Wind Mill 
Street, and in the winter season the concerts were on 
Friday evenings from eight to ten of the clock in the Zim- 
mermann Coffee House, During the times of the fairs, the 
Musical Union played twice in each week, on both Wed- 
nesday and Friday. Also, under Sebastian’s direction the 
Union gave several special concerts, performing the music 
he wrote for them, as on the Queen’s birthday, in Decem- 
ber 1733, he gave a performance of his Dramma per 
Musica, and, a month later, a work he wrote for the 
coronation festival. Sebastian controlled the Musical 
Union for some years and brought it to a high state of 
competence, giving some very beautiful performances for 
the delectation of those people in our town who under- 
stood and appreciated music. 

I heard most of these concerts and many of the 


[ 100 | 


PART FOUR 


rehearsals of the Schule choirs that took place in our house, 
and used, when I could spare the time, to go and listen 
to those that took place elsewhere, and on one occasion, 
when I could not go, one of my husband’s pupils, Johann 
Christian Kittel, who at the time was living with us, came 
and told me all about the rehearsal of a cantata. ‘Caspar 
had to accompany on the harpsichord,” he told me, ‘‘and 
thou mayest imagine that he could not venture on playing 
too meagre an accompaniment from the figured bass, and 
he seemed to me a little nervous, especially as he had 
always to be prepared to find the Herr Cantor’s hands and 
fingers suddenly coming in over his arm, and without 
troubling him any further the accompaniment completed 
with masses of harmony, which amazed him even more 
than the unexpected proximity of his strict master. What 
a wonderful man is our master!—there is not such 
another in all Germany, and I do not know whether we 
love him or fear him most.” “I think I know, Johann,” I 
said, smiling. ‘‘Well, yes, thou art right—but still, ’tis a 
terrible thing to vex him.” 

These young men, Sebastian’s pupils, who passed in 
procession year by year through our house, some staying 
with us many years, some a lesser time, were nearly all of 
them a source of interest and pleasure to me, as they were, 
in a still closer sense, to their master. They used to come | 
fresh and impressionable to him—only very occasionally 
were they filled with self-importance, and very soon, if 
they were any good at all, they lost that and became very 
humble when they saw the greatness of Sebastian’s nature 
and of his powers—and quickly he discovered to them the 
solemnity of the calling of a musician, the hard work, the 
uplifted heart, the devotion it required. ‘‘He lights a 
flame in our breasts,” one said to me on leaving, “and 


tor 


PART FOUR 


music will always speak to us with his voice.” To me it 
was beautiful to see these young men gathered like 
disciples round my Sebastian, so eager, so devoted, so 
full of the ardour of youth and music, working very hard, 
copying score after score of their master’s music that they 
might bear it away with them when they left him, studying 
counterpoint and composing themselves under his direc- 
tion and presenting the results of their labours to him 
with a nice mixture of trembling and pride, practising 
many instruments, but more particularly the clavier and 
the Organ, studying hard in all things, and eating—well, 
only I knew what they would get through in the way of 
food and drink. ‘‘Music makes us very hungry, Frau 
Bach,” they would say, following me into the kitchen to 
beg for a bowl of black broth or a cup of almond milk and 
a heller-loaf, ‘‘and when the Herr Cantor is pleased with 
us we are so cheered that we must eat, and when he is not 
then we must sustain our drooping spirits!’”” ‘They were 
a merry set of young men, though they took their music 
very seriously. 

These, of course, were Sebastian’s proper pupils, who 
were going to devote their lives to music, in whom he took 
the deepest and most fatherly interest, but in the latter 
years of his life he had a certain number of amateur pupils 
who rather bothered him by insisting on having a few 
lessons from “Bach of Leipzig,” as he was by that time 
called. He tried to some extent to get rid of this kind of 
pupil in whom he was not greatly interested, by charging 
more for the lessons, but when that did not frighten them 
away, he accepted such number as he could spare time 
for, as the remuneration was of considerable assistance to 
us. But if any of these pupils proved too conceited or too 
careless he promptly turned them out of doors. I remember 


[ 102 | 


PART FOUR 


one musical amateur of the clavichord who was given a 
certain piece of music to study and when he returned at 
his next lesson proceeded to play it with a different tempo 
and fingering from that Sebastian had marked for him. 
“T think it sounds better this way,” he declared blandly, 
“and I find thy manner of using the thumb difficult, so I 
preferred to do it my own way.” Sebastian’s face darkened 
for a moment, then it cleared, and he said with a smile, 
“Sir, thou art evidently too advanced for my teaching, so 
we will bring these lessons to an immediate conclusion.” 
“Oh,” said the fine gentleman, rather taken aback, “I 
think I might learn something from you.” But Sebastian 
never gave him another lesson. If he saw conceit pro- 
ceeded from sheer stupidity he rarely troubled himself to 
reprove it, even when it took the form of expecting him to 
listen to compositions of no worth. Herr Hurlebusch of 
Brunswick came once to our house, bringing with him 
some easy clavier sonatas of his own writing, which he 
proceeded to play to his own satisfaction, though hardly 
to anyone else’s, as we in our household were used to 
music of a different order. Sebastian listened in courteous 
silence, which Herr Hurlebusch took for extreme admira- 
tion, as it was his habit to expect people to be smitten 


mute by the wonders of his playing, and when he departed 


he presented his published sonatas to Friedemann and 
Emanuel, exhorting them to their diligent perusal and 
practice, as music of that quality would be very helpful to 
them—‘‘In teaching you what to avoid,” said Sebastian, 
with a quiet twinkle when the self-satisfied composer was 
well out of earshot. 

But his own regular pupils were very different to these 
fine gentlemen, and among them certain names stand out 
as particularly dear to Sebastian and particularly good 


[ 103 ] 


PART FOUR 


musicians. That Martin Schubart, whom I never knew, 
who was his first pupil, always had a steady place in his 
affectionate regard, and then there was dear Christoph 
Altnikol, who married our daughter Elisabeth, and the 
two Krebs, father and son—it was of the son, Johann 
Ludwig Krebs, so admirable a musician and Sebastian’s 
pupil for nine years, that he made a little joke, saying, “he 
was the only Krebs (crab) in his Bach (brook).” Ludwig 
cherished with particular care the testimonial his master 
gave him on his leaving, in which Sebastian wrote: ‘The 
bearer of this, Herr Johann Ludwig Krebs, has asked me 
to help him by giving him a testimonial of his conduct on 
our Foundation. I have no reason to refuse him this service, 
in fact I am glad to do it, as I am persuaded that we have 
trained him, especially in music, in which he distinguished 
himself among us by his playing on the clavier, violin, and 
lute, and equally in composition, in such a way that he 
should have no hesitation in letting people hear him, as 
will appear more fully when he does so. I therefore trust 
that he will obtain Divine assistance to help him to 
advancement, and I recommend him once again most 
heartily.” 

IT cannot write a list of all the pupils, there were too 
many, but among those who distinguished themselves and 
proved that they had profited by the incomparable teach- 
ing they had received was Gottlieb Goldberg, a very 
beautiful clavier player who became clavicenist to Baron 
von Kayserling, and for whom Sebastian wrote an Air with 
Thirty Variations for a two-manualed harpsichord, which 
we commonly called the Goldberg Variations. 

Another pupil of whom Sebastian thought very highly 
was Johann Philipp Kirnberger, who is now teaching in 
Berlin and who bases all his teaching on what he learned 


[ 104 | 


PART FOUR 


from his master. When Kirnberger first became Sebastian’s 
pupil he worked so hard and with such unceasing ardour 
that he fell ill of an intermittent fever, and was confined to 
his room for many weeks. In the times when he was free 
from the fever he continued to work with extreme diligence, 
and Sebastian, being touched by his indomitable spirit and 
devotion to music, used to go to his lodging to give the 
lessons, instead of the pupil coming to him in the usual 
way, as it was bad for Kirnberger to go out, and difficult 
for him to send his scores and exercises backwards and 
forwards. Kirnberger had the greatest reverence for his 
master, and this instance of his kind consideration filled 
his heart with deep gratitude, which one day he tried 
stumblingly to express. “Say nothing about gratitude, 
my dear Kirnberger,” Sebastian answered him. “I am 
glad thou wishest to study music with thoroughness, and 
it only depends upon thyself to make all I have learned 
thy own. Lask nothing of thee but the assurance that thou 
wilt in time hand this small knowledge on to other good 
pupils, who may not be content with the ordinary lurwm- 
larum.” ‘This Sebastian’s ‘“‘good pupil” has certainly 
spent his life in doing ever since he himself began to 
teach. 

A few days ago a pupil of Kirnberger’s, who was passing 
through Leipzig, specially came to see me—he said, with 
a courtesy we do not always receive from the young, that 
he did himself much honour in waiting upon the widow of 
the great Cantor, for whose memory he had acquired such 
reverence from Herr Kirnberger, and that he had a little 
story to tell me which he thought might give me some 
pleasure. On a day a week or two past, he told me, he 
went to Herr Kirnberger’s for his lesson, but when he 
reached his room found a scene of commotion, a splash of 


[ 105 ] 


PART FOUR 


water on the floor, a velvet cloth laid over a portrait of 
Sebastian which he possesses and cherishes with much 
devotion (it gives me comfort in these sad days to think of 
the few faithful hearts who still reverence and love our 
Sebastian’s memory), and Kirnberger himself with an 
irate countenance from which the wrath faded into kind- 
ness as he beheld his surprised pupil on the threshold. 
‘Enter,’ he cried, “‘“my room is once more habitable: I 
have refreshed the atmosphere and washed the chair, and 
I will now unveil the Portrait that thou mayest be per- 
mitted to gaze upon it again!”’ For a few moments, said 
the young man, after this greeting, he almost imagined 
his honoured master’s senses must be a little unbalanced by 
some shock, till he heard what had happened. It appeared 
that but an hour before his arrival a wealthy Leipzig linen 
merchant had been to see Kirnberger on a matter of 
business. After a few moments he noticed Sebastian’s 
portrait on the wall, and exclaimed, “‘Why, great heavens, 
to think of thou hanging up in a place of honour a portrait 
of our late Cantor Bach. He was but a rough person, and 
if the vain fool has not had himself painted in a rich velvet 
coat!’ This was too much for the good Kirnberger (well 
I remembered him to be of a disposition somewhat im- 
petuous and with the warm musician’s temper), who 
quickly rose and taking hold of the merchant with both 
hands propelled him to the door, saying in a loud voice, 
“Out, dog! Out, dog!” and rushed him into the street 
with little ceremony. ‘Then he returned to his room and 
proceeded to have the chair in which the merchant had 
sat thoroughly washed, and the contamination of his 
presence removed by the burning of aromatics. I could not 
help laughing a little as this story was told to me, but tears 
came, too, at the sign of Kirnberger’s warm and faithful 


[| 106 | 


PART FOUR. 


love towards Sebastian. ‘‘The great Patron Saint of 
music,” Kirnberger once called him to me, “none of 
your pretty Italianate Saint Cecilias for me, but our good 
German Saint Sebastian, who in his single mind contained 
the whole of music!” 

It is like light in a dark room to recall to my memory 
in these days of loneliness those enthusiasms and ardours 
of Sebastian’s pupils. I am not sure if there is any relation- 
ship in this world quite so pleasing to the mind as the 
relationship of master and pupil, both united in the pure 
pursuit of an art so lovely as the art of music—the master 
experienced, full of knowledge, guiding, inspiring the 
young minds that come to him, severe but kind, permitting 
nothing to receive his approval but the best of which the 
pupil is capable, perceiving and drawing out hidden gifts; 
while the pupil studies, watches, listens, values each word 
that comes from those wise lips, flings his whole heart into 
obtaining the cherished approval of his master. ‘Those at 
least were the relations that existed between Sebastian and 
his pupils—the real pupils, who lived with him and loved 
him—in our house. And, of course, the pupils who had 
the fullest measure of his teaching and his influence were 
his own sons. To all who worked hard—and it must be 
said of most of them that they did, for the good master 
makes the good pupil—he was so exceedingly gentle. In’ 
my memory has remained a little word he said to Emanuel 
who, when studying composition, found himself per- 
plexed and embarrassed in a certain modulation and 
informed his father of this difficulty, who thereupon took 
the pen from his hand and put all to rights, returning the 
score with these words, “My son, suppose you were to 
try it this way?’’ Surely it were hardly possible to set 
error straight with more sensitive consideration. 


[ 107 | 


PART FOUR 


It was one of the happinesses of my life that these young 
men, when their feelings overflowed, so often came to me 
to talk about their master: ‘‘ Mother Bach, do let us talk 
a little with thee,” they would say, and I always knew of 
whom and of what they wished to speak. “It both com- 
mands our reverence and quickens our heart,” said a dear 
pupil of Sebastian’s, Heinrich Gerber, to me on one 
occasion, “‘to see this man of so great a genius sitting 
down among his pupils, and explaining with such patience 
the elementary rules of harmony, or how to play from the 
figured bass, or the proper use of the fingers on the clavi- 
chord. We saw, and wondered at, in him the result of his 
methods, how the most exact knowledge and the finest 
executive power were combined in him. And then the 
times when he suddenly stopped teaching, swept aside 
the books and the exercises, and sitting down himself at 
the clavier or the Organ, showed us the flight of his genius 
in improvisation! Heavens above! those were the hours 
for which we lived. What music—I would lie awake at 
night (which thou knowest was never easy to me) to recall 
ittomy mind. It made me want to shout for joy, it made 
me want to weep. Those are the hours we will none of us 
forget till we are cold in our graves.” I remember the 
flush on his young countenance as he said this to me. 
Heinrich Gerber had a particularly strong feeling of rever- 
ence and attachment to Sebastian. He came to Leipzig 
partly that he might study law, but even more that he 
might study music under the Cantor of the Thomas 
Schule, but he was six months in our town before he 
summoned up the courage to present himself before 
Sebastian and ask for lessons, so great was his admiration 
and his awe. But Sebastian, as always to those who truly 
loved music, was very kind, and at the first interview put 


[ 108 | 


PART FOUR 


his hand on the young man’s shoulder and called him 
“‘fellow-countryman,” for he came from Thuringia like 
himself. Heinrich was positively trembling with a mixture 
of happiness and fear at his first lesson, when Sebastian 
placed his “Inventions” on the clavier, and from those 
he rapidly progressed to the ‘Well-Tempered Clavi- 
chord,” for which he always had a peculiar affection, as 
he had the good fortune to hear Sebastian play them right 
through three separate times in his own unapproachable 
manner. Sebastian would sometimes in this way reward a 
diligent pupil, and saying, he felt indisposed to teach, seat 
himself at the instrument and play to his enchanted listener 
the work he might be studying and much other music, 
sometimes for an hour or more together. In any case he 
made a rule to play himself to his pupils the music they 
were to learn, saying, “‘That’s how it ought to sound,” so 
that the complete form and rhythm of the piece rose 
before their minds and they knew to what end their 
efforts must aim. 

For a time Sebastian had a young pupil who came 
from Italy, Paolo Cavatini, whom at first I thought a 
strange and troublesome boy. Among our wholesome 
Germans he was dark, saturnine, sulky, jealous, but extra- 
ordinarily gifted Sebastian thought him, and he had not 
been with us long before he developed a passionate devo- 
tion to his master. He never seemed happy away from him, 
and followed him all the time with his great dark, melan- 
choly eyes. He was distressingly jealous of the other 
pupils, and declared violently that their “‘heavy Saxon 
minds” could by no possibility appreciate such a God-sent 
genius as Sebastian. If Sebastian for any reason was not 
pleased with his work he would fling himself upon the 
floor without ado and weep in the way a child weeps when 


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PART FOUR 


it is angry and hurt. We were all puzzled by him and me 
he frightened a little, he was so passionate and uncontrolled, 
but Sebastian seemed to understand him better than the 
rest of us (Friedemann frankly hated him), and was very 
patient with him. He did and said the strangest things. 
One day he came rushing into the room, looking particu- 
larly wild, and threw himself full length on the rug, 
glaring at me who was seated with the mending basket at 
the table in a curious excited manner. ‘Thou sittest there 
and sewest,” he burst out, ‘and dost thou know thy 
husband has been making music before which the choirs 
of Heaven might bow their heads? Dost thou love hime 
dost thou understand him?—but what woman could? 
Mend his clothes and cook his dinner, that is the best 
thou canst do for him!” I was a little angered, but not 
much, for the boy was so distraught. ‘‘Paolo,” I said, 
“thy remarks are not very seemly to thy master’s wife: 
but I do love him and even maybe understand him 
better than thou believest.” ‘‘Forgive me,” he begged, 
suddenly looking very miserable, “‘I hardly know what I 
say, that music moves me out of reason, and I love him so 
much it hurts me.” At his saying that some impulse stirred 
in me and I bent over and kissed the top of his curly head. 
“T know how that feels, Paolo,” I said to him, and from 
thenceforward we were friends. ‘There was not a very long 
space that he was with us after that little scene, for in a 
short time, it being the season of winter, he caught a 
chill and died. One could not but feel he was not fitted for 
this life, so passionate, excitable, and unbalanced he was. 
But he became so gentle, even patient, in his few days’ 
illness. Sebastian’s heart was terribly wrung by his dying 
—he left all his work to be with him, except composing, 
for he would take his score to the boy’s bedside and write 


fattest 


PART FOUR 


it upon his knee, or just sit with Paolo’s hand in his and 
those dark eyes fixed upon his countenance. “I am happier 
than I have ever been,” Paolo said to me once with a 
beautiful smile, when I entered the sick room carrying a 
posset for him, and found him holding Sebastian’s hand 
in his thin one and looking strangely contented—a look 
he never had before. He was beginning serious compo- 
sition when he died, and Sebastian thought so highly of 
his work that he said, “I fear we have lost another 
scarlatti—there was genius in that boy, which explains 
his unhappiness in this world.” 

Sebastian’s method of teaching composition was quite 
different from the stiff and lifeless rules set by other 
teachers. Harmony, counterpoint, playing from the 
figured bass, the art of fugue—he taught them all in a way 
that made them real and interesting. He began at once 
with four-part harmony over a figured bass, and he made 
all his pupils write each part or “‘voice’”’ on a separate 
stave, so that there should be no confused or meaningless 
parts—no voice saying nothing but foolishness. If a voice 
had nothing to say it must be silent. The inner parts must 
be smooth and have a real melodic line—indeed, Sebas- 
tian’s own harmony was really multiple melody—and no 
note was to be permitted existence without a proper 
pedigree. No haphazard additions to a chord for the sake 
of impressiveness would he ever countenance: “And 
where do these notes come from?”’ he would say, striking 
his quill through them, half quizzical, half stern, “have 
they fallen from the sky upon thy little score?” His pupil, 
Kirnberger, said it was his rule that it is best to begin with 
four-part counterpoint, as it is impossible to write good 
two- or three-part counterpoint until one is familiar with 
that in four parts. For as the harmony must of necessity be 


ferer | 


PART FOUR 


incomplete, one who is not thoroughly acquainted with 
four-part writing cannot decide with certainty what should 
be left out of the harmony in any given case. After Sebas- 
tian’s death, this good Kirnberger was engaged in a musical 
controversy with Herr Marpurg, and as a final word 
always quoted his master. This made Marpurg angry, who 
exclaimed, so I was told, ‘Good God! why should old 
Bach be dragged into a discussion in which he no part 
would have taken had he been still living? No one will be 
persuaded ever that he would expound the principles of 
harmony according to the views of his pupil, Herr Kirn- 
berger. Iam convinced that this great man had more than 
one manner of teaching, and that he would always adapt 
his methods according to the capacities of each pupil, as 
he saw that he was more or less naturally gifted, or quick 
in learning or slow. And I am well assured that if there 
exist any instructions in harmony in the hand-writing of 
this master they will not be found only containing certain 
things which Herr Kirnberger wants to put before us as 
Sebastian Bach’s way of teaching.” 

Herr Marpurg is right as to the variety of Sebastian’s 
methods of teaching, but he is wrong in thinking that 
Kirnberger’s reverence for his master would allow him to 
claim anything as emanating from him which had not 
really done so. 

All his pupils in composition had to work out their 
ideas in their minds before ever they put pen to paper, 
and he would allow no composing at the clavier. If they 
lacked the faculty of doing this, of composing mentally, 
then he discouraged them from any attempt, saying they 
were evidently intended for some other part in life than 
the hard one of a composer—‘‘A thing of small rewards 
and much labour,” as he once said. But that was said in 


[ x12 | 


PART FOUR 


a moment of bitterness, and his habitual attitude is more 
fully shown in some rules he gave his pupils: ‘Figured 
bass is the most perfect foundation of music,” he wrote; 
“it is executed with both hands in such a manner that the 
left hand plays the notes that are written, while the right 
adds consonances and dissonances thereto, making an 
agreeable harmony for the glory of God and the justifiable 
gratification of the soul. Like all music, the figured bass 
should have no other end and aim than the glory of God 
and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in 
mind there is no true music, but only an horrible clamour 
‘and ranting.” 

Sebastian wrote out with much patience careful “Rules 
and Instructions for Playing Thorough-bass or Accom- 
paniment in Four Parts, made for his Scholars in Music,” 
in which he gave rules and examples in the clearest abun- 
dance and with the kindest understanding of their diffi- 
culties, as twice he gives a simpler alternative “for those 
who cannot remember this rule.” In my Clavier Buchlein 
of 1725 he also wrote the construction of the scales in the 
major and minor modes and some rules of figured bass, 
while at the end he wrote a hurried little note, ‘The 
other points which ought to be remembered are better 
conveyed by word of mouth than in writing.” In which 
all those fortunate enough to have been his pupils will 
heartily agree—no written rules could compare with the 
experience of being taught by Sebastian himself, of 
hearing his lucid explanations, of laying one’s difficulties 
before him and having them solved by his quick and un- 
faltering knowledge. 

Sebastian’s own gifts in filling out parts and improvising 
were, of course, of an extraordinary nature, and only to be 
properly appreciated by those who were themselves trained 


[ 113 ] 


PART FOUR 


musicians. Ifa figured bass part was put before him when 
he was at the clavier or Organ, he would instantly play a 
full trio or quartet from it. But this was generally when he 
had already played some music by one of his favourite 
composers, which always stimulated his mind. ‘Thou 
must know,” said a friend of ours, Magister Pitschel, who 
brought an acquaintance to our house to hear Sebastian 
improvise, ‘“‘that this famous man who in our town enjoys 
so great a reputation as a musician and is the admiration 
of all connoisseurs, cannot, so it is said, ravish people with 
his wonderful combinations of tones unless he has set his 
imagination going by first playing fromascore.” Sebastian, 
who overheard this remark with his hands poised over the 
keys, smiled quietly to himself and said nothing. 

As I look back I see there were many occasions when 
Sebastian said nothing—he let people argue and discuss 
all about him, but he rarely joined in unless it were some 
serious question involving the art or practice of music, 
when he said what he had to say and then ceased. He 
never took trouble to explain himself to the outside world, 
or only did so when certain rights and privileges of his 
position were in question, about which he was very tena- 
cious, as was but fitting. His mind was so occupied with 
the deep things of music that I had at times the feeling 
that he was almost unconscious of us, though we thronged 
about him—and this with no lessening of his affectionate 
goodness to us. I have had awful moments when I looked 
at him, seated in his armchair, with the children and myself 
all round engaged on our various pursuits and yet I felt 
that he was all alone—above us, beyond us, and lonely. 
Sometimes the feeling was so strong and painful that I 
would upset my sewing or my music copying and run to 
him and, kneeling by his side, put my arm round him. 


[ 114 ] 


PART FOUR 


“Why, Magdalena,” he would: say, tender and kind, 
“what is it? what has perturbed thee?”” But I never told 
him. How could I? The great ones of this world are 
always lonely, and in that only follow afar off their Exem- 
plar, the Greatest of All. 

Of course, it was when he composed music and even 
more when he improvised it—especially at the Organ— 
that he expressed his great heart and soared to those 
regions that were native to him and where he, and only 
he, as I think, was fully at home. Some of the most glorious 
music that ever came to his mind will never be heard by 
human ears again—he made it once and never wrote it 
_ down, and it has died with his death. There are a small 
company of us who heard him make this music, who 
listened with uplifted hearts to the heavenly harmonies 
that flowed from his fingers, when we die the very memory 
of it will be gone. This seems to me of a great sadness. 

Pupils of his whose musicianly judgment and knowledge 
were based on his own teaching, have told me that some of 
the music he improvised, flung into the echoing air to fade 
into silence, was more wonderful than any of the music 
he wrote down for Organ or clavichord, wonderful as the 
written music is. There was a curious contradiction about 
Sebastian: in the things of daily life he was careful and 
meticulous and economical, in the making of music he had 
a marvellous prodigality and richness. But it must not be 
forgotten that this richness, though truly the gift of God, 
was based on hard and unceasing work and study all his 
youth, indeed, fully until he was thirty years of age—or, I 
might say with greater truth, till the day of hisdeath. His 
mind never slumbered in a lethargy of self-satisfaction, 
and he never ceased the task of revision of his music—he 
was engaged on that work at the time of his dying—and I 


[ 15 ] 


PART FOUR 


always felt the words of Ecclesiasticus belonged to him, 
“For a dream cometh through the multitude of business.” 

Therefore the very Muse of music seemed to speak from 
his fingers when he let his spirit flow in improvisation, and 
time stood still for his listeners. It is entirely impossible to 
give any idea, to those who have not heard him, of the 
singular expressiveness and beauty of his inspirations. But 
I can give a little account Johann Kirnberger wrote in a 
letter to a friend which came into my hands through the 
kindness of the friend: ““When the Herr Cantor sat 
down to the Organ,” he wrote, “irrespective of Divine 
service, as he was often requested to do by strangers, he 
would choose some theme and play it in every form of 
Organ composition in such a way that the matter remained 
the same, even when he had played uninterruptedly for 
two hours or more. First he would use the theme as intro- 
ductory, and for a fugue with full Organ. Then he would 
show his skill in varying the stops, in a trio, a quartet, or 
what not, still on the same theme. ‘Then would follow a 
chorale, and with its melody the first theme would again 
appear in three or four different parts, and in the most 
various and intricate developments. Finally, the close 
would consist of a fugue for full Organ, in which either a 
new arrangement of the original theme was predominant, 
or it was continued with one or two other subjects, 
according to its character.” 

Most organists were astonished and somewhat alarmed 
when they saw Sebastian’s Organ registration—for he 
followed none of the accepted ideas unless they suited his | 
need. They imagined that such combinations of stops 
could not in any manner sound well together, so they were 
the more astonished when he began to play and they per- 
ceived that the Organ tones had never sounded so beautiful, 


[ 116 | 


PART FOUR 


even though the registration was strange and unusual to 
their ears. Sebastian had pleasure, also, when improvising, 
to go into all the possible keys, even the most remote, but 
so skilful were his modulations that few of his hearers 
realized this. 

A musician well known at the Court of the King of 
Prussia, Herr Quantz, who wrote a treatise on “The Art 
of Playing the Flute,” in which Sebastian was much in- 
terested, said in this volume that Sebastian Bach, “This 
admirable musician,” had brought Organ-playing to the 
highest possible degree of perfection, and that it was to 
be hoped that when he died it may not be suffered to 
decline or to be lost, as is greatly to be feared from the 
small number of persons who nowadays bestow pains 
upon this lofty art. But in saying this, Herr Quantz must 
have forgotten the number of Sebastian’s Organ pupils, 
whom he had so wonderfully imbued with his spirit. All 
these tributes to his genius I treasured up in my mind— 
they gave me far more pleasure than they gave Sebastian 
himself, though he always valued the appreciation of 
musicians. His knowledge of the theory of music was 
profound and deep, but had nothing of the pedant about. 
it. Indeed, one of his friends said of him, ‘‘ Let anyone ask 
the great Bach, who has a perfect command of all artifices 
of art, and whose astounding works one cannot see or hear 
without amazement, whether, in the attainment of this 
great skill and dexterity, he even once thought of the 
mathematical relations of the tones, and whether he once 
consulted mathematics in the construction of so many 
musical artifices.” 

I should say he certainly did not—he who had music 
in his blood and bone had small need of mathematics. He 
had a curious instinctive knowledge of the behaviour of 


[ 127 | 


PART FOUR 


sound, as is shown by the fact that once, when he was in 
Berlin, he was taken to see the new-builded Opera House, 
and when he stood in the gallery of the great dining-room 
he said at once that if someone standing in a corner of the 
hall spoke in a whisper another person standing in the 
corner diagonally opposite with his face to the wall would 
hear every word, though no one else could do so. The 
experiment was at once tried and Sebastian proved night, 
though even the architect had not suspected this curious 
acoustic quality of the room. 

Perhaps because of his deep-seated natural under- 
standing of all musical matters, Sebastian was less rigid 
than many teachers and allowed to those of his pupils who 
showed ability a certain freedom from rules: ‘Two 
fifths and two octaves must not follow each other,” he 
would tell them, and add with one of the little smiles that 
so lighted up his rather stern face, “That is not only a 
vitium, but it sounds ill, and what sounds ill cannot be 
music!”” He himself never hesitated to break the rules, 
if he felt a pressing need to do so, and I always felt what 
Martin Luther said of a favourite musician fitted Sebas- 
tian most perfectly, ‘He is the master of the notes; they 
have to do as he wills; other composers have to do as the 
notes will.” Another saying of Luther’s that Sebastian 
himself often quoted with satisfaction was, ‘‘The Devil 
does not need all the good tunes for himself!” 

And both he and Luther took care that he did not have 
them. 


fr reat 








PART V 


ALL this time our young family increased around us, 
though, alas, when the cradle had been replenished it was 
so often made empty again by the grudging hand of 
death. ‘There were times, I confess, when I felt it cruel to 
bear children but to lose them—all the hopes and love 
buried in the little graves besides which Sebastian and I 
have so often stood hand in hand, silent. But I knew these 
rebellious feelings towards God were impious and [ tried 
my best to suppress them. My first daughter, Christiane 
Sophie, only lived to attain the age of three years, and 
my second son, Christian Gottlieb, was that tender age 
when he too died. Ernestus Andreas lived but a few days, 
and the next child, Regine Johanna, had not reached her 
fifth birthday when she too departed from this world. 
Christiane Benedicta, who was born just after the Natal 
Day of the Babe of Bethlehem, could not face the bitter 
winter and died when the New Year was but four days 
old—how joyful had we felt it that our new child should 
arrive at the holy time of Christmas, and how bleak seemed 
the New Year when Sebastian, with tears in his kinds eyes, 
knelt by my bedside and told me the small infant had left 
us. Christiane Dorothea lived but a summer beyond the 
first year of her life, and Johann August lived only three 
days. So out of our thirteen children we lost seven, which 
sadly hurt our hearts, but we tried to feel it was the 
chastening of the Lord, and cherished the more the 


[ rar | 


POR Re ee eve 


children we had left in our diminished family. When we 
had come home from the burial of one of these young ones 
and I was sitting sadly down, doing nothing—I never 
could get used to losing them, though kind matrons of my 
acquaintance came to comfort me and tell me it was the 
lot of all mothers, to bear children and to lose them and be 
happy if they kept and reared the half of those they bore 
—Sebastian sat down by my side with a book in his hand, 
out of which he read me what Luther said when he lost 
his daughter, Magdalene, and saw her lying in her coffin: 
“Thou darling Lena, how happy art thou now! thou 
wilt arise again, and shine as a star, yea, asthesun. How 
strange it is to know so surely that she is at peace and 
happy and yet to be so sad.” And he also read to me what 
Luther wrote in a letter to a friend: “‘ You will have heard 
that my dearest daughter, Magdalene, is born again in the 
everlasting kingdom of Christ. Although I and my wife 
ought only to thank God with joy for her happy departure, 
whereby she has escaped the power of the world, the 
flesh, the Turks and the Devil, yet so strong is natural 
love that we cannot bear it without sobs and sighs from 
the heart, without a bitter sense of death in ourselves. So 
deeply printed on our hearts are her ways, her words, her 
gestures, whether alive or dying, that even Christ’s death 
cannot drive away this agony.” 

After I had listened to this reading I was able to weep 
against Sebastian’s shoulder, and then I felt somewhat 
comforted. 

But to enable us to bear these griefs our losses were 
mercifully spread through a space of years, and we had 
the six children who lived to console us for the seven 
children who died. And whether we were sad or not we 
had to keep our young family happy, for sadness does not 


[122 ] 


PAO 2 


fit the faces of children. Also, I had my needful work to be 
done in the house, and Sebastian his daily labours in the 
Thomas Schule and Church and all the writing of his 
music. 

So long as Herr Gesner was Rector of the Thomas 
Schule things were well with us in regard to Sebastian’s offi- 
cial work, and he had a few years as Cantor without fric- 
tions and disagreements to disturb his peace. He worked 
very hard and composed so many cantatas and other 
music that even I a little lost count of them. Of course, it 
was but natural he should write with greater freedom when 
his mind was free from outside harassments. When he got 
involved in quarrels, as he did sometimes with the Council 
and the Consistory—and all his serious quarrels were on 
matters connected with his rights and standing as Cantor 
—he became at times extremely angry, and, what was 
more difficult, extremely obstinate, which was always one 
of the Bach ways. I tried at times to plead with him not 
to be so stubborn when a little yielding might have made 
things smooth. But it was no use: he would pat my 
shoulder (he never let his anger with others overflow on 
to me) and say, ‘“‘ My dear wife, this is a matter that con- 
cerns me, not thee.” But, of course, it did concern me— 
how could it not, when I saw the ill-effect it had on his 
peace? 

After Herr Gesner resigned his post as Rector of the 
Thomas Schule, and in his place was appointed the second 
Ernesti, Herr Johann August Ernesti, things changed to 
our disadvantage, and I now come to an affair in our life 
at Leipzig which gives me much pain to recall—the long 
quarrel Sebastian had with the new Rector and with the 
Council and Consistory. This lasted for nearly two years, 
and though Sebastian eventually emerged successfully 


[ 123 ] 


PAR Tick £Vve5 


from it owing to the intervention of the Electoral Prince— 
nevertheless it cast a cloud over that time and I fear did 
more harm to his happiness than he would ever admit, 
even to me. When the feud was ended he never quite 
returned to his old place in the Schule and the general life 
of Leipzig, but withdrew himself more into the seclusion 
of his house and his work. 

At the first matters were quite pleasant with the Herr 
Rector Ernesti, who had been godfather to two of our 
children. He was much younger than Sebastian, almost 
young enough to be his son—therefore the more reason 
that he should have treated his Cantor with some respect 
and consideration, even though he was his official superior. 
But the affair of the Prefect Gottlieb Theodor Krause 
entirely destroyed all friendliness of relationship between 
the Cantor and the Rector. 

The probable root of all the trouble lay in the fact that 
the Herr Rector was absolutely indifferent to music, even 
contemptuous towards it, so that he would say to any boy 
he discovered practising a musical instrument, “So thou 
art going to be an ale-house fiddler, art thour” This 
would not so much have mattered had he been content to 
leave the entire direction of all the musical concerns of the 
Thomas Schule in Sebastian’s hands. But he would not, 
he interfered in the appointment of the prefects, and in 
particular promoted the prefect of the second choir to be 
prefect of the first choir, which was a serious matter in- — 
volving the performance of the music, for, as Sebastian 
pointed out in a complaint he made to the Council, the 
prefect of the first choir must not only be a person of good 
voice and character, but he must have also the knowledge 
and ability to conduct the music when the Cantor is not 
able to be present. : 


[ 124] 


Pawel TV OE 


Trouble first arose over the Prefect Theodor Krause, 
whom Sebastian had specially enjoined to keep strict 
watch over the smaller boys, some of whom were very 
unruly, and especially to punish with severity any dis- 
orderly conduct in church. On the occasion of a wedding, 
Krause found the boys behaving so badly that, warnings 
having failed, he proceeded to chastisement, and, the 
boys resisting, he gave them a somewhat heavier correc- 
tion than he had intended. This being brought to the 
knowledge of the Rector he was extremely angry. In spite 
of Krause’s excellent character and the fact that he was 
just going to the University, the Rector condemned him to 
a public flogging before the whole Schule. Sebastian was 
thunderstruck at this violent and unjust punishment of his 
prefect, and was prepared to take the blame of Krause’s 
action on his own shoulders. He made two attempts to 
obtain remission of Krause’s ignominious sentence, but 
the Rector would not be moved from his angry decision. 
Poor Gottlieb Krause came round to our house to learn 
the result of the appeal, and when Sebastian, with a set 
face, told him, he went very white and said, ‘Then, Herr 
Cantor, I shall have to run away and leave the Schule—I 
cannot face such disgrace.” Sebastian himself came to the 
conclusion that this was the only way out, for the punish- 
ment was not only intentionally and cruelly vindictive, 
but Ernesti carried his rancour so far that he withheld 
Krause’s possessions and singing money, which were in 
his hands, till he was obliged to restore them by an order 
of the Council. 

All this matter disturbed Sebastian very greatly: he 
was not only grieved for Krause, but he felt a serious in- 
jury had been done to his position as Cantor, and from 
that time he felt uncertain of the Rector. But that was not 


[ 125 | 


PVA RS SDs 


the end of the trouble—indeed, in a sense it was but the 
beginning. Gottlieb Krause’s position as first prefect was 
given to another of the same name, Johann Krause. 
Sebastian did not think well of this young man—indeed, 
on one occasion when he and the Rector were returning 
homewards together from a wedding feast at which they 
had both been present, they fell to discussing this Krause 
and his fitness to a prefect’s appointment, and Sebastian 
said he considered him “a disreputable dog.” Ernesti 
agreed to some extent, but as Johann Krause was clever 
decided to make him a prefect, and Sebastian did not 
oppose, though he hardly approved. This, of course, was 
before all the trouble began. So on Gottlieb Krause’s 
sudden departure from the Schule this Johann Krause 
was made first prefect in his place. But, as might have 
been expected, he did not prove satisfactory, and after a 
time Sebastian made him second prefect and promoted 
the third prefect to his place, telling the Rector what he 
had done and why. Ernesti at first made no objection to 
this change, but Krause was very injured and appealed to 
the Rector, who sent him to the Cantor. Sebastian at this 
became exceedingly angry, and in a fit of wrath told 
Krause, I fear unwisely, that he had made him second 
prefect in order to show the Rector, who had interfered 
in what was not his affair, who was master in this matter. 
Krause immediately told this to the Rector, who there- 
upon asked the Cantor for an explanation, and Sebastian, . 
by now in a towering rage and without thought of any 
consequences, repeated his words to the Rector with no 
diminution of their vigour. I will not forget when Sebas- 
tian came home that evening—I did not know what had 
happened till later, though I had feared there was trouble 
brewing about this wretched Krause—he stood on the 


{ 126 | 


rea RT) BL VE 


threshold of the room where we were (I thought with a 
pang he looked suddenly older) and he said, “My dears, 
do not speak to me just now, or I will say things I will 
regret. I would be alone for a while.” 

I think he felt he had put himself in a wrong position 
by being too hastily annoyed and letting the strong Bach 
temper, which as a rule he kept so well under control, rise 
up in him. Anyway, when the Rector demanded that 
Krause be reinstated in his position as first prefect he 
agreed to yield the point. But he was very sore and angry, 
and Krause was insolent and triumphant and behaved so 
badly at the next choir practice that it was plain he would 
be impossible as first prefect, so Sebastian took no steps 
to put him back in his forfeited place. Then the Rector 
declared that if Krause was not reinstated by the Cantor 
he himself would do it the following Sunday morning. 
Sebastian wrapped himself in obstinate silence, so the 
Rector did as he threatened and sent Krause to tell 
Sebastian what he had done. This was before Matins— 
how sad a disturbance to occur on God’s day of peace— 
and Sebastian at once went to the Superintendent, Herr 
Deyling, and told him what had happened. Then he went 
to St. Nicholas’s Church, fetched the second prefect, 
Kiittler, from thence, took him with him into St. Thomas’s 
where the service had begun, turned out Krause in the 
middle of a hymn and put Kiittler in his place. I myself 
think Sebastian should not have done this, that it was 
wrong and put him in the wrong—the one time in our life 
together when I ever ventured to think him less than wise 
—but the Bach temper and the Bach obstinacy were both 
thoroughly roused in him, and an angry man does not 
take heed to his ways. Ernesti, of course, was inthe 
church, and saw this high-handed proceeding of the 


mew 


PART FIVE 


Cantor’s, and he also, after the service, went to the 
Superintendent and won him over to his side. He reported 
this to Sebastian, who said he would not retract anything 
in the matter, let it cost what it might, and that he would 
lay a complaint in writing before the Council. The next 
thing done on this distressing Sunday was that before 
Vespers the Rector came to the Organ-loft and publicly 
forbade the choir boys, under penalty of heavy punish- 
ment, to carry out the Cantor’s orders with regard to the 
prefects. This was extremely unjust and vindictive of the 
Rector, as by long-established use and custom all to do 
with the choir and the prefects rested in the Cantor’s 
hands. When Sebastian arrived for the service and found 
Krause once more in the first prefect’s place he simply 
took him by the collar and turned him bodily out. But the 
boys had been so intimidated by the Rector’s remarks that 
Sebastian found no one dared lead the motett, so his good 
pupil, Krebs, did this for him. The next day Sebastian 
wrote a memorial to the Council in which he said that in 
the “Nicolai Church, at the afternoon service yesterday, 
to my great humiliation and dejection, not a single scholar 
would undertake to lead the singing, much less to conduct 
the motett, for fear of being punished. Indeed, the service 
would thereby have been interrupted had not most fortu- 
nately these duties been undertaken by an old scholar of 
St. Thomas’s, of the name of Krebs, at my request. I repre- 
sented in my late most humble memorial that the appoint- 
ment of the prefect does not, according to the rules and usage 
of the Schule, pertain to the Rector; he has, moreover, by 
his mode of action, greatly vexed and offended against me 
in my official position, and thus weakened and indeed tried 
to deprive me of the full authority over the scholars in all 
matters of Church and other music which I ought to have.” 


[ 128 | 


PART FIVE 


The Council took no action in this matter, either for 
Sebastian or against him, but let things drift, and so the 
miserable affair went on for nearly two years, with a state 
of war between the Rector and the Cantor, which naturally 
had a very unhappy result upon the discipline of the 
Schule. They both wrote memorials to the Council stating 
their grievances, and Ernesti allowed himself to say spiteful 
things against Sebastian which were so contemptibly un- 
true that we could hardly be hurt by them—as that my 
most upright husband was bribable, as that an old specie 
thaler had many times made a soloist of a boy who was 
no soloist before. Sebastian laughed grimly when this 
remark came to his ears, but he was deeply wounded at 
the position into which he had been forced by the Rector’s 
unwarranted interference with his proper rights, and it 
was a moral principle with him not to yield any of these 
rights in order to effect a compromise. Being a Bach, com- 
promise was not much his way. ‘I have the special care 
and supervision of the first choir and I must know best 
who is most suited to me,” he said with justice to the 
Council, “and nothing effectual can be achieved if the 
scholars are prevented from obeying me in all matters 
pertaining to the singing.” And he ended by making the 
request (this went somehow to my heart, as curiously 
pathetic coming from him) that the Schule children be 
enjoined “‘to again render me the respect and obedience 
which are due to me, and so enable me for the future to 
fulfil the duties of my post.” 

The Council would not do anything definite one way 
or another, and so things dragged on, until in despair, 
Sebastian, who had at last received the appointment of 
composer to the Court at Dresden, which he had requested 
three years earlier, was emboldened to appeal to the 


[R204 


PART UE ve 


Electoral Prince that the affair should be properly inquired 
into and his due rights as Cantor no longer withheld from 
him. ‘The Prince returned a favourable answer and called 
upon the Consistory to duly inquire into and settle the 
complaint of Sebastian. Then at the Easter Fair of 1738 
the Elector came himself to Leipzig, and Sebastian paid 
his respects to his royal patron and performed in his 
honour an “Abend-Musik,” which was most kindly 
received. After perceiving the favour with which his 
Prince regarded him, the authorities of the Thomas 
Schule more or less ceased the petty persecutions to 
which they had subjected him. 

In all the main questions of this dispute there can be 
small doubt Sebastian was within his right and the custom 
of long tradition was behind him. I fear he put himself a 
little wrong at the beginning by a certain violence and pro- 
vocativeness of attitude. But imagine the intolerableness 
to such a man, of a reputation so great—there were people, 
though not of the Council or Consistory, who called him 
“the glory of Leipzig’—to be checked and corrected by 
a person so insusceptible to music as Herr Ernesti, to be 
subjected to the insolence of an ill-conditioned youth like 
Krause, and the covertly encouraged disrespect and dis- 
obedience of the boys of the Thomas Schule. This affair 
made me feel that it was a kind of waste of Sebastian that 
he should be teacher of music to small boys. So many 
others could be that—few or none could do what Sebastian 
could do. 

Certainly it left a mark upon him, aged him, and made 
him keep more at home—though, indeed, that had always 
been the place where he ever was the happiest—to a quiet 
and domestic life, to undisturbed and constant work at 
his art. He withdrew very largely from participation in the 


[ 130 ] 


PART FIVE 


public affairs of Leipzig. His children, his private pupils 
—most of whom simply boiled with indignation over this 
treatment of their beloved master and went about demand- 
ing Ernesti’s head on a charger—and I did our utmost by 
our respect and affectionate devotion to salve the wounds 
his spirit had received. His nature was not light, and he 
felt things in the deeps of him of which he gave little out- 
ward sign, save to those few who knew him intimately. 
Many times through those long months when I saw the 
set of his mouth and droop of his big head, I wished we 
had gone to Russia or anywhere on the globe, so that he 
would have been with people who would a little have 
appreciated his greatness and not been so vindictive to his 
mistakes. 

But of course there were pleasant things as well as un- 
pleasant ones during this time. Sebastian went to Dresden 
when he received the title of Composer to the Saxon 
Court, and on the afternoon of the first day of December 
he played from two of the clock till four on the new Organ 
built by Silbermann in the Frauenkirche, in the presence 
of many musicians and persons of distinction, including 
the Russian Ambassador, Count von Kayserling, who 
heard him with the profoundest admiration. And from 
such a scene as this he was on his return to Leipzig to be 
summoned before the Council and solemnly reproved 
because a choirboy in the Nicolai Church had happened 
to pitch a hymn too low for the congregation to sing, and 
told to see that it did not occur again. 

Count von Kayserling, who was a great lover and con- 
noisseur of music, became one of Sebastian’s warmest 
admirers and came over from Dresden on many occasions 
tosee him. Indeed, it was the Count’s doing that Johann 
Goldberg became a pupil of Sebastian’s, and a very 


[ 131 | 


PAR T WEEN 


brilliant one he proved, displaying on the clavier, which 
he studied unceasingly, a skill and facility and a rapidity 
of finger quite astonishing. For this pupil’s playing 
Sebastian wrote that Air with Thirty Variations which is 
such a test of the player’s ability that few will attempt it. 
The theme of this music first came into Sebastian’s mind 
in the Sarabande in G major, which I copied into my 
second Notenbuch. I was so vexed with myself because, 
when I was writing out in my book “Be thou but near,” 
I turned two pages over by mistake, but I filled in the 
space with this sarabande, which later became the theme 
of the Goldberg Variations. ‘This music was composed at 
the Count’s request for Goldberg to play to him, as he 
suffered from sleepless nights and attendant melancholy, 
which he found best driven away by the strains of music. 
He was never weary of listening to these Variations, and 
gave to Sebastian for their composition the very munificent 
gift of a snuff-box containing a hundred louis d’or. 

But it was not only the gifts and praise of the nobility 
that did Sebastian honour, he would think as much, if not 
more, of the humble tribute of a fellow-musician, as when 
Andreas Sorge, who was Court and town organist to the 
Count of Reuss, dedicated some little clavier pieces of his 
own to Sebastian, “the prince,” as he called him, “of all 
clavichord and Organ players,” and he also said in his 
dedication that “the great musical virtue which your 
Excellency possesses is embellished with the admirable 
virtue of affability and unfeigned love of your neigh- 
bour.” 

I think I have already said how hospitable Sebastian 
was. Our simple board was always open to any visitors 
to Leipzig who had a real care for music, whether they 
were famous people or poor students, and the stores of his 


Weta 


RAR T ELV.SE 


wisdom and experience and the beauties of his playing 
were always freely given to them. Among our quite 
frequent visitors were the Director of the Opera at Dres- 
den, Herr Hasse, the so famous composer of opera seria 
and his wife the renowned singer, Faustina Bordoni. 
Frau Hasse was very gay and richly attired, also she was 
very kind and full of praise for Sebastian’s music, some 
of which she sang extremely well in her powerful voice. 
Sebastian used to enjoy her society and that of her husband, 
but he said one day, after they had been with us, “I 
always feel as if my Magdalena had got flattened into a 
corner when Frau Hasse is here!”” Which rather expressed 
my feelings also. I think that people who have travelled a 
great deal and seen the world and received so much fame 
and applause as Frau Faustina Hasse always seem to take 
up a great deal of room in any apartment where they may 
be. But I did really like them both, for they appreciated 
and honoured Sebastian, and Herr Hasse was a man he 
always had pleasure in talking with, not only because he 
was so great an operatic composer, but because he was 
learned and without prejudice and pride, and not given 
to evil speaking of other musicians—in this being like 
Sebastian himself, who was entirely free of musical 
jealousies. Sebastian went sometimes to Dresden, usually 
with Friedemann, and he was always treated there with 
distinguished respect and consideration. He enjoyed 
listening to the opera occasionally as a change from his 
own serious Church music, and when he felt inclined for a 
visit to Dresden would say to his son, “‘ Well, Friedemann, 
shall we go to Dresden to hear the pretty little songs 
again?’ I always was glad to see the father and son go 
off together on these little expeditions, for Sebastian 
returned refreshed and cheered from them. He was 


[ 133 ] 


PART FIVE 


present at the first performance of Hasse’s opera, “‘Cleo- 
fide,” in which his wife, Faustina, appeared. On the 
following day, it being the 14th of September, Sebastian 
himself played on the Organ of St. Sophia’s Church before 
the most distinguished musicians in Dresden. When 
Friedemann was organist at Dresden in 1733, Sebastian 
had still another reason for his journey thither in order 
to see the son so dear to him. Sometimes it was I and not 
Friedemann who went with him on one or two of his 
musical journeys, though somewhat rarely this happened, 
as it was always difficult for me to leave the house and the 
children, and by the time they were all big enough to be 
left neither Sebastian nor I greatly cared to travel far 
from our own abode. But in 1732 he was invited to Cassel 
to try the renovated Organ in St. Martin’s Church there, 
which had been two years in restoration. He carried me 
with him on this expedition, and very handsomely con- 
sidered we were by the Council of Cassel; they gave 
Sebastian fifty thalers for trying the Organ, and twenty-six 
thalers for his travelling money, while our expenses were 
paid at our lodgings, where we stayed eight days, and a 
man-servant was provided to wait upon Sebastian. It was 
a very happy little holiday to me, casting off the cares of 
my household, wearing my two best gowns, one mulberry 
colour and the other blue, going about with my husband, 
observing the deference paid to him, hearing him play on 
several Organs, seeing all the sights in Cassel, and feeling, 
as Sebastian said to me with a smile, as though we were 
but newly espoused and first together, instead of being 
married a matter of nearly eleven years. 

Of course, any member of the wide-branching Bach 
family, whether coming from Erfurt, Arnstaédt, Eisenach, 
or any other part of Saxony, was sure of the warmest 


[ 134 | 


Praise co Pe VE 


welcome under Sebastian’s roof. He had educated his 
nephew, Bernhard, the son of the elder brother who 
partly brought him up, and no Bach ever appealed to him 
for assistance in vain. His cousin, Johann Elias Bach, now 
Cantor at Schweinfurth, was for a good while in Leipzig 
studying, and was a very welcome member of our family 
circle. Some time later, as a sign of gratitude, he sent 
Sebastian a small cask of new wine, but when it arrived 
and was opened it was found about a third part empty, 
“which is indeed a pity,” said Sebastian, looking at it 
with a somewhat rueful countenance, ‘‘that of so noble a 
gift of God the smallest drop should have been wasted.” 
His cousin had offered to send him another such cask of 
wine at a later date, but Sebastian sat himself down at the 
table and carefully made out what the partially empty cask 
had already cost him for freight, delivery and town excise, 
and found that it came to nearly five groschen a measure. 
“No,” he said, getting up after he had made these calcu- 
lations, “we will not have any more wine from Schwein- 
furth, five groschen a measure is much too expensive for 
a present! But I must write and thank my good cousin 
for his well-intended kindness and present gift, and inform 
him of the reasons that I cannot afford another cask of 
wine.” 

But though he was, from necessity, also from his in- 
herited Bach frugality, careful and scrupulous about all 
money matters, I remember an occasion on which he 
really wasted some groschen in pursuit of a bit of musical 
fun. He at one time quite often met a particular troop of 
beggars who always approached him with the same suppli- 
cations rising to a crescendo of entreaty in which Sebastian 
declared he recognized a certain series of intervals. So he 
made ready to give them something and then pretended 


[ 135 | 


A TSE an apis Mad die Sak TY 3 


he could find no money on his person, whereupon the cry 
of the beggars became piercing, so he bestowed a small 
alms upon them which somewhat quietened their com- 
plaints. ‘But,’’ he said, in telling us of this little episode 
one day, “I must satisfy myself as to whether a larger 
alms will not bring about a full resolution of that chord 
and a complete close on the key-note.”” So meeting the 
group of vagabonds—the “‘beggarly quartet” he called 
them—again he bestowed so liberal a dole that to his 
amusement and satisfaction the dissonance was resolved 
in the way he wished. 

In another manner Sebastian did this for a friend of his 
Leipzig days, Christian Henrici, who wrote the texts for 
many cantatas and oratorios under the assumed name of 
‘“‘Picander.”’ His earlier secular writings were not of the 
best reputation when Sebastian first came across him, but 
he perceived the young man’s talent—‘‘Picander” was 
fifteen years younger than Sebastian—and as he was in 
much need of a writer of texts for his vocal music, he took 
him in hand. ‘“Picander” showed that he had good 
qualities in him, in spite of a certain coarseness and com- 
monness of mind, for he responded to Sebastian’s interest, 
became his admirer and friend.and started writing the sort 
of sacred poetry Sebastian required. He said once to 
Sebastian that many of his friends had laughed to see him 
assuming an interest in Divine matters: but he did not 
wish to be thought quite unmindful of heavenly things, 
and considered it was only right to offer to hisCreator the 
fresh fruits of his youth and not the worn-out remains of 
his old age, if he ever attained toit. He wrote a year-book 
of cantatas, which in the preface, he said were written “To 
the glory of God and at the request of many good friends.” 
And he went on to say, ‘“‘I undertook the design the more 


[ 136 ] 


PAE I FIVE 


readily, because I flatter myself that the lack of poetical 
charm may be compensated for the more readily by the 
loveliness of the music of our incomparable Capellmeister 
Bach, and that these songs may be sung in the principal 
churches of our pious Leipzig.” ‘‘Picander” was quite a 
good musician—which made him a much more useful 
helper to Sebastian as a writer of poetry—and he became 
a member of the Musical Society when it was under 
Sebastian’s direction. 

I always felt it that was Sebastian’s unconscious in- 
- fluence—his uprightness, his love of all things which are 
fair and righteous, which had so excellent an effect upon 
the mind of Christian Henrici. To know Sebastian was 
without doubt to be influenced in this way, and to hear 
his music surely made one anxious to be good. I have 
said that Sebastian was not much elated by praise, and 
always took it very quietly, but once, when a cantata of 
his had just been sung, one of the students came to him 
and said, “‘ Master, that music of thine makes me feel as 
though I could not do anything wrong for at least the 
whole of a week after hearing it!” I think that simple 
saying pleased Sebastian right to his heart, in a way that 
elaborate praises so rarely did. 

An occupation on which Sebastian bestowed some of 
his leisure was the compiling of what he called the ‘‘Ar- 
chives of the Bachs”’—a sort of family tree and collection 
of records and compositions of various members of the 
Bach family. He always had a strong family feeling, a 
Bach was to him not just as other people, but one to whom 
he was drawn by invisible bonds of a shared ancestry and 
similar tastes, for almost unfailingly, to be a Bach meant 
to be a musician. The very letters of the name itself was 
a musical theme, as Sebastian would smilingly point out, 


[ 137 ] 


PA KT OF DV 


and he wrote a fugue on this subject. As he grew older his 
thoughts often turned backwards to the earlier scenes of 
his life, to Eisenach, to Erfurt, and to Amstadt. To 
Erfurt he went on one occasion, where he had long and 
friendly converse with a Bach relation who was interested 
and proud to hear of all his works and doings, and he came 
home much refreshed and pleased. All this family feeling 
in him of course found its deepest expression in his 
devotion to his own family, to those growing sons and 
daughters under his roof, for whose education and welfare 
he had such careful thought. When the elder sons began 
to leave us and go out into the world for themselves, he 
took as constant an interest in them as though he saw 
them daily, and could play with them in his leisure those 
concertos in D minor and C major he wrote for three 
clavichords which I always regarded as one of my happiest 
experiences to hear. He always was particularly benign 
and pleased on these occasions, for Friedemann and 
Emanuel were such admirable performers, trained, to a 
skill that almost matched his own, by their father, from 
whose hands they had received their entire musical edu- 
cation. ‘The music flowed with exquisite smoothness and 
precision from those three pairs of hands, and at specially 
favourite passages Emanuel would look across at 
Friedemann with a happy expression, or Friedemann 
smile at Sebastian. And I would look at them all and 
think how Sebastian was father both of the players and 
of the music, and wonder a little at him, as I did at sudden 
moments when I quietly gave my mind to thinking of him. 
I never quite got used to him in all the years of our 
marriage: I would have queer stabs of astonishment at 
the something so big in him which I never quite under- 
stood or could explain, which the people of Leipzig, 


[ 138 ] 


PAW tor LV E 


which even his own sons and daughters, in spite of their 
admiring respect, never seemed to perceive. But to me it 
was always in the background of my mind, it was likea 
faint fear, and even our love never entirely cast it out. He 
was always bigger than I could reach to—I always knew 
this from our first meeting—though he enfolded me in 
so kind an affection and to be near him was my daily need. 
I was unable to imagine a world without him—except as 
a midnight fear, an awakening in a sudden horror that I 
_ was alone—from the time I first saw him till his death has 
made me know that for me the world is empty. 

But to what sad thoughts I am come from the beautiful 
memories of Sebastian making music with his two eldest 
sons. Then those sons left our roof and went to make 
their own place and living by the art they had received so 
abundantly from their father. Friedemann became 
organist in the Church of St. Sophia at Dresden, and he 
composed music of which Sebastian thought so well that 
he often copied it out with hisown hand. Sebastian hada 
high opinion of the compositions of his two eldest sons, 
and seemed to regard their works as of equal importance 
with his own, and in publication often grouped them 
together, as Friedemann’s Clavier Sonata was to be had of 
the author in Dresden, of his father in Leipzig, and of his 
brother in Berlin, while Sebastian’s Six Three-part 
Chorales were “to be had in Leipzig of Capellmeister 
Bach, of his sons in Berlin and Halle, and of the publisher 
in Zella.”’ 

Friedemann was organist in Dresden for thirteen years, 
and then he went to St. Mary’s Church at Halle, where 
Herr Zachau, the famous organist who taught Handel in 
his youth, had been in charge of the music. ‘This appoint- 
ment pleased Sebastian greatly, but something that 


[ 139 | 


PA RiP Bee ee 


happened there caused him distress in his last years. 
Friedemann was commissioned to compose the music for 
a festival at the University while he was at Halle, for which 
he was promised the sum of one hundred thalers. Friede- 
mann simply fitted to his text the music Sebastian had 
written for one of his sacred oratorios, because—this 
bitter fact came to our knowedge later—he had been 
drinking so heavily that his head was too muddled to 
compose music of his own, so he stole his father’s work 
and it was performed as his, amidst applause. Had not 
someone from the neighbourhood of Leipzig happened to 
be present and recognized the music, the fraud might have 
passed undiscovered—but it was exposed and Friedemann 
deservedly never got his hundred thalers. ‘This deception 
of his favourite son’s came as a heavy blow to the father 
in Leipzig, but even so he tried to palliate it. ‘He has 
enough brains and gifts to write the music for himself,” 
he kept saying, “he has no need of mine: he would never 
have done it but for that cursed drink, ah, poor Friede- 
mann!”’ 

It was indeed poor Friedemann, so brilliant as he was 
and so perverse, with an increasing recklessness and 
passion for drink, quarrelling with all those who would be 
his friends, deserting his wife and little daughter—I am 
thankful Sebastian did not live to see the last state of this 
most cherished son. Friedemann in some ways almost 
seemed a changeling among the Bachs, except in his 
music and musicianly powers, which still shine through 
his dissipated manner of living, like pure gold amid ashes. 

Emanuel, whom his father had intended at first to 
bring up to the study of philosophy and law, was too 
deeply imbued with the Bach passion for music to do 
anything but follow in Sebastian’s footsteps, which he 


[ 140 ] 


Pra Beate VE 


did with admirable success and industry. His musical life 
followed a settled path, for when he was twenty-four years 
old he entered the service of the most musical King 
Frederick of Prussia when he was Crown Prince, and is in 
it still as his royal master’s clavier accompanist. He 
always took some pride in recalling that after the Crown 
Prince came to the throne he had the honour of accom- 
panying on the clavier, quite alone at Charlottenburg, the 
first flute solo that Frederick played after he became King. 
It was through Emanuel’s official position at the Prus- 
sian Court that Sebastian had the privilege of playing in 
the presence of that sovereign who so well understood and 
valued the art of music. 

Sebastian’s third son, Bernhard, when he was twenty 
years old, became organist at Miihlhausen, where his 
father had been before him, for, hearing of this vacancy, 
Sebastian wrote a letter to the Council in which he asked 
for their support in obtaining the post so as “to fulfil my 
desires and make my son happy.” But poor Bernhard did 
not live very long, he wandered about a good deal, and 
for a time we did not even know where he was, which 
made us very unhappy, and he got into debt. He died at 
Jena. 

Of the three sons who lived of Sebastian’s and mine, 
two became musicians, and the one in whom we had the 
greatest delight, who, child as he was almost took the 
place of the absent Friedemann, was our youngest son, 
Johann Christian, who was fifteen years old when Sebas- 
tian died, and to whom he made the present of three of 
his finest pedal claviers. Sebastian himself was fifty years 
old when Christian was born, and from his babyhood he 
had a particular affection for this child, who was as 
brilliantly gifted as any son of Sebastian’s need be, quick, 


[ r4z | 


PAR IT Ei vs 


loving, intelligent, and always trotting about after Sebas- 
tian, hanging on to his coat-tails, begging for music- 
lessons and music-paper—a real joy and solace to his 
father, and I had a particular joy of my own in watching 
them together. Life brings disappointments to us all, and 
not even our children make always for happiness, but I 
felt that our last son, Johann Christian, was a special gift 
of God to us, adding, as he did, so much felicity to his 
father’s closing years with his youth, his ardour, his gifts. 
How many boys and young men Sebastian had guided 
through the intricate labyrinths of music in his time, and 
I think, none with greater satisfaction than his youngest 
son. 

And thus our large family of thirteen children gradually 
left us: so many of them dying, hardly staying to make 
experiment of this life at all, and the others grew from 
childhood to youth, and then went away from the Cantor’s 
House at Leipzig to make their own place in the world. 
In our later years our household had dwindled to the 
eldest of all Sebastian’s children, Katharina Dorothea, 
our eldest son, Gottfried, who though grown remained 
but a child in mind (with flashes of musical genius in him 
which it was not possible to cultivate—I have seen his 
father sit listening by the clavier with tears in his eyes 
while Gottfried played in his wild, untaught, but touching 
fashion), and the rest of our children, dear pretty Liessgen, 
Christian, Johanna, and the little Susanna. Katharina 
Dorothea, with her sweet, sober disposition, was a great 
comfort in our household. She was very retiring before 
strangers and only showed her full niceness in her own 
home circle. To her father she was devoted with a passion 
that few imagined under her quiet manner. When a 
promising young advocate came seeking her hand in 


[ 142 ] 


PoAGRa ty EiLived 


marriage she refused him, much distressed at her in- 
civility, but quite firm. I talked with her a little, and 
pointed out the goodness of marriage to her: ‘‘ Well 
mayest thou say so,” she replied to me, “for thou art 
married to my father. But this Herr Advocate is not like 
my father, he is not even of a musical disposition, I have 
even doubts as to whether he appreciates my father’s com- 
positions, besides I do not love him. Moreover,” and here 
she began to weep with a vehemence unlike her usual re- 
strained demeanour, “I could not leave my father, I 
could not live away from him—thou, at least, Mother, 
should understand that.” I did understand, and so urged 
her no more. Sebastian, with his usual kindness, did not 
employ his parental authority, but said, “Well, let the 
dear maid do as she wills—I have never thought it well 
to force the inclination in matrimony.” 

As the years went on the cares of the household grew 
somewhat less, as both Katharina and Elisabeth were good 
and capable and the best of helps to me, and so I had 
more leisure to spend at Sebastian’s side, and we got back 
to some of the quietude of our first married years. Tome 
this was joy: when our many visitors were not there, and 
I had my Sebastian a little while to myself. ‘Then came the 
times for which I always cared so much, when seated by 
his side he would take some volume from his shelves of 
books and read aloud in his deep voice to me, while I 
occupied my hands with the family mending. In this way 
he read to me much of Luther’s “Table Talk,” in which 
he took extreme pleasure. He would read Luther’s saying, 
“When natural music is heightened and polished by art 
there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine 
to a certain extent (for it cannot be wholly seized or under- 
stood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His 


[ 143 ] 


PeA RD For Vor 


marvellous work of music.” He would read this or some other 
opinion of Luther and lay down the book for a moment 
and look across at me and say, “Is it not a wonderful 
matter, Magdalena, that thou and I, by means of this book 
in my hand, can talk with Luther, as it were? Can ask his 
opinion on any subject on which we desire it and obtain 
his answer? Books should always be treated with great 
consideration, for they hold for us the wisdom of the past.” 

He always so treated them himself, and his library was 
a source of solace to him when he was troubled over out- 
side things. He would forget the ways of the Thomaner 
boys in reading the learned Josephus’s “‘History of the 
Jews,” or Geyer, his ‘Time and Eternity,” or the volume 
of Rambach “On the Tears of Jesus.” He also had par- 
ticular consolation in the “Sermons” of that good 
Dominican monk, Master John Tauler, of Strasburg, who 
lived in the long time before us. I think he was first 
minded to the purchase and reading of this book by what 
Luther said: “If thou hast a mind to read a volume of 
pure, thorough, Divine learning, get for thyself the Ser- 
mons of John Tauler, the Dominican. For nowhere, in 
Latin or in German, have I seen a more wholesome theo- 
logy or one that accords more with the Gospel. ‘This isa 
book wherein may be seen how the best learning of our 
times is not even brass, but is mere iron compared with 
this learning of true blessednesa” 

From this volume Sebastian read many times to me to 
my great edification, especially on the evenings of the 
Sundays, when one’s spirit should be specially peaceful 
and inclined to holy things. Some passages, which par- 
ticularly pleased his mind, would be read often till I had 
them by heart, as this one: ‘‘How can we come to per- 
ceive the direct leading of God? By a careful looking at 


| 144 | 


Pek TP ORV E 


home, and abiding within the gates of thy own soul. 
Therefore, let a man be at home in his own heart, and 
cease from his restless chase of and search after outward 
things. If he is thus at home while on earth, he will surely 
come to see what there is to do at home—what God com- 
mands him inwardly without means, and also outwardly 
by the help of means; and then let him surrender himself 
and follow God along whatever path his loving Lord 
thinks fit to lead him: whether it be to contemplation or 
action, to usefulness or enjoyment; whether in sorrow or 
in joy, let him follow on. And if God do not give him thus 
to feel His hands in all things, let him simply yield himself 
up and go without for God’s sake, out of love, and still 
press forward, setting ever before him the lovely example 
of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ.” 


[ 145 | 








| 
i 





PART VI 


I FEEL I must give a little space of this chronicle to 
Sebastian’s music, which to some degree I have neglected 
in writing so much about himself and his life—though, 
indeed, to me, he and his music may not be severed. I can 
no more imagine Sebastian without his music than I can » 
think of his music being written by any other than himself. 
I am not able to write a learned treatise on this subject. 
greatly as it does require it—indeed, some person of the 
quality of Herr Marpurg or Herr Quantz only is fitted 
to do this—but I can tell something of the eo it had on 
those who heard it. 

When I stop to try and count up all the music that 
Sebastian wrote in the course of his life I am astonished 
and bewildered at its mere quantity—the Organ music, the 
chamber music, the hundreds of Church cantatas, the 
great Latin Mass, the five different sets of music to the 
Gospel accounts of our Lord’s Passion, the cantatas for 
the six days of Christmas, the Well-Tempered Clavichord, 
the Suites and Partitas and the other clavier music—as I 
recall it all, some sudden lovely aria, some Organ fugue or 
trio, comes to my inward ear, like ‘My heart, ever faith- 
ful,” or “Prepare thyself, Zion,” or such Organ music as 
the haunting opening of the “‘Passacaglia,” or that grave 
and lovely little ““Canzona” in D minor, and I cannot 
write for remembering that beauty. 

And he who wrote these things is gone from among us 


[ 149 | 


PART SIX | 

—though truly we who loved him can say in Divine words, 
“He, being dead, yet speaketh.” I feel sure, with an un- 
shakeable conviction, that so long as that music lives, he 
will live: there are newer fashions in music come up, and 
the young, who ever seek after new things, follow them, 
but as they become older, if they are serious and worthy 
musicians, they will find that they have to return to 
Sebastian. Apart from being his wife—or his widow, as, 
alas, I now am—lI know enough of the art of music to be 
convinced this must be truth, in spite of the present neg- 
lect of his works, so few years after his death, and the much 
greater favour that is shown towards the compositions of 
his sons Friedemann and Emanuel, than to his. “Old 
Bach,” he is called now, and “the old peruke”—ah, me, 
reverence has departed out of the world, I fear. How 
differently we regarded our forbears when I was young. 

Sebastian himself never followed any “fashion” in his 
music: he had tried and tested all forms in the pursuit 
of his own education and development, he had an iron 
perseverance in his determination to reach the real struc- 
ture and meaning of music, but in all he wrote he expressed 
his own conviction and inspiration without regard to the 
pleasing of contemporary taste. Therefore much of his 
music is not cared for or understood. ‘I believe thou 
wouldst write just the same music if all people were deaf!” 
I said to him one day.. “I believe I would,” he answered, 
smiling; “‘a many of them are, as it seems, but at least 
I can hope that some day they may hear a little better! 
And if I write to please myself I must not be too much 
vexed an they do not like it.” As a matter of truth, he 
never seemed to trouble much what people thought of his 
music, except it were for just the small circle of people 
whose opinion he cherished. 


[ 150 | 


Gh BS Sat a ee a, © 


Into my hands as I write this has come, by Caspar 
Burgholt’s kindness, a description of my husband as a 
musician, which reinforces what I have said as to his 
greatness, and which, for my pleasure, I will here set 
down: ‘‘Herr Johann Sebastian Bach was a genius of the 
first order, so unusual was his soul, so vast, that before he 
is reached by anyone centuries will have to passaway. He 
played the clavier, the fliigel, the cymbal, with an equal 
creative power, and the Organ—who is there like to him? 
Who will ever be his equal? His fist was of immense 
size; he could stretch a twelfth with the left hand, and 
perform running passages between with the three other 
fingers. His pedal runs were performed with the greatest 
possible exactness, he drew the stops so silently that the 
hearer was overcome with the magical effect; his hand 
was inexhaustible, and lasted out unwearied through a 
whole day’s Organ playing. Both the grave and the 
humorous style were familiar to him; he was both a 
virtuoso and a composer. He had such a wealth of ideas 
that only his great son can come near him; and with all 
this he combined a gift for teaching that was of the rarest 
quality.” 

In his youth Sebastian wrote a Capriccio on the depar- 
ture of his elder brother, Johann Jacob, to join the Swedish 
’ Guard as a player on the oboe, and this Capriccio we often 
performed in our family concerts, for it is very charming 
and used to amuse the young ones with its post-horn 
fugue, while the “Lament” on the brother who could not 
be persuaded to stay at home has a very haunting melody. 
Sebastian was always rather pleased when we played this 
youthful production of his, and said it made him feel the 
age again at which he composed it. 

Most of his music, of course, is Church music, with the 


[ x51 | 


PART SIX 


exception of the large amount of chamber music he wrote 
at Cothen, but he wrote a few cantatas, apart from the 
“Capriccio,” which were secular. The most important of 
these were the “‘Peasants’ Cantata,” the “Coffee Can- 
tata,” and ‘Phoebus and Pan.”’ Also some music-dramas 
for the name-days of certain personages, and wedding 
cantatas and the delicious Spring Cantata, which, it being 
written for a soprano solo voice, I so often sung in our 
home at Sebastian’s wish. For my singing also he wrote a 
sacred cantata, the one for Septuagesima, ‘‘I am content.” 
He was wont to say, smiling at me in his so kind way, that 
the words, “Let others have their whims, I still will be 
contented,” suited his wife. ‘And wherefore not, since 
she is thy wifer”’ Isaid to him in answer. At least I knew 
the cause of my content and that it had deep roots. 

So much of Sebastian’s music is on grave and sacred 
themes that those who did not know him were surprised 
that he should write things full of fun and humour, like 
the “Coffee Cantata.” But he liked a laughing tale, and he 
also liked coffee, as well as good beer and his pipeful of 
tobacco, and when his friend, Picander, made up a 
humorous story about the evils of coffee-drinking and how 
it nearly deprived a maiden of her lover, till she outwitted 
her father and contrived both to have her lover and her 
dish of coffee, Sebastian was vastly pleased and minded to 
set it to music. Picander made up the story that a royal 
mandate had come that none should drink coffee without 
special permission obtained, save the King and his Court, 
alone. “Alas!” wailed the womenfolk, ‘‘as well take 
our bread from us, for deprived of coffee we are but dead!” 
The people of Leipzig are said to be specially addicted to 
the drinking of coffee. ‘The daughter of a certain Schlend- 
rian was so enamoured of coffee-drinking that her father 


[ 152 ] 


PART SIX 


threatened she should have no husband till she gave it up 
—hbut she got the better of him by letting it be known 
she would marry none unless he promised her that she 
should still have her coffee. To this little tale Sebastian 
wrote some gay and lively music, which was always a 
favourite with his family, and many a time he listened and 
smiled at three of his children singing the happy trio with 
which it closes. 

Picander also wrote the words for the “Contest of 
Phoebus and Pan,” that very charming and amusing can- 
tata of Sebastian’s which was performed by the Musical 
Society of 1731. The song of Phcebus is very melodious 
and beautiful, and well may Momus tell him to ‘‘grasp 
again his lyre,” as “nothing is more lovesome than his 
song.” Pan has some lively music to sing, which is in 
pleasant contrast to that of Phoebus. After it was first 
given one of the Leipzig Councillors came up to me and 
said, “I congratulate thee, Frau Bach, on this performance 
of thy husband’s. I knew not that he could write music of 
this style, for of a truth I thought of the Herr Cantor in 
connection with Church music only.” ‘‘That is because 
thou dost not know him in his home,” I answered, “‘ where 
indeed, he makes music of all kinds.” And I thought of the 
quodlibets and gay little minuets, and the little nonsense 
songs he would make for an infant as he jumped it on his 
knee, nonsense songs with a catching air that all the 
children would at once pick up and sing about the house, 
till at last they had to be stopped on pain of their father’s 
wrath. ‘But thou madest it, Father!” protested a small 
maiden to him when the command to cease went forth: 
“Yes, and now, like a Roman parent, I will slay it,” said 
he, pinching the child’s ear, “I cannot be so plagued by 
my offspring!” 


[ 153 ] 


PrA (RY T= Sie 


But, of course, the Councillor was right in associating 
Sebastian with the music of the Church and the gravity 
and dignity that naturally went with such compositions— 
he who in his years in Leipzig composed the “Principal 
Music,” as the Church cantatas were usually called. So 
many are there and so beautiful that it is beyond my power 
to even mention them all, and besides our people in 
Leipzig are familiar with them through many Sundays. 
Always, when I went to Mattins each Sunday it was with 
the good thought that I would hear the ‘ Principal Music”’ 
which he had composed, and therefore that it would be 
beautiful and set heavenly things before our minds. Of 
course, even among his compositions, I had those which I 
specially loved, which filled me with a sort of exaltation, 
so that at times when I had come home with him and saw 
him sitting at the head of the table eating his dinner with 
a good appetite (which happily he always had, so that it 
was a pleasure to cook food for him), I had a kind of 
feeling that it could not be true—I mean that such music 
could not be written by someone who ate and slept and 
walked about this world, but must have dropped straight 
from Heaven above us. Doubtless Sebastian would have 
thought me very foolish could he have seen into my mind 
at these times. 

But, of course, I who lived with him, who knew how 
constantly his thoughts moved among religious and 
spiritual things, how dear to him were the chorale melo- 
dies of our Fatherland and how much part of his life from 
childhood, should have been the last person in this world 
to be surprised at any music he should produce. In one 
sense I was not, but yet, in some of his music, in some of 
his melodies and great choruses, there was a quality which 
I would almost dare to call miraculous—which seemed to 


[ 154 | 


PACER Eos 1X 


stop one’s breath, and leave one afraid of him who had 
produced such music. JI felt like this when I heard for the 
first time, on the Twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity, 
ten years after my marriage, the “Principal Music” 
Sebastian had written for that day, “Sleepers, Awake!” 
The words and melody of the chorale were written more 
than a hundred years ago by a Pastor Nicolai, when his 
flock nearly all perished in a terrible visitation of the 
plague, and it is a beautiful poem and noble melody, 
which no doubt helped to inspire Sebastian to so glorious 
acantata. But the whole subject of the text, the Heavenly 
Bridegroom Who comes in the night, the Wise and the 
Foolish Virgins, the joy of the Bride, inspired Sebastian 
to write such music as none save he could write. 

Another cantata that always filled me with a kind of 
awe was “Christ lay in Death’s dark prison,” which 
Sebastian wrote for the second day of Easter. But, indeed, 
they all, in their different manners, had beauty, some 
grave, majestic, almost terrifying, some gentle and tender 
and full of the light and love of God. The more one knows 
them, the less easy is it to speak of them. Words cannot 
say what that music says. But Sebastian did not despise 
words—they meant much to him when they showed forth 
beautiful things, and certain phrases of the Scriptures, the 
verses of some hymns, drew from the depths of his heart 
that music in which he expressed the feelings which they 
raised in him. There was a hymn he loved, “Jesu, my 
chief treasure,” and for it he wrote a five-part motett of 
incomparable beauty. The words of the hymn are these: 


Jesu, my chief treasure, 
Source of purest pleasure, 
Truest friend to me: 


[ 155 ] 


YAR EAS tie 


Ah! how long I’ve panted, 

And my heart hath fainted, 
Thirsting, Lord, for Thee. 

Thine I am, O Spotless Lamb, 

I will suffer naught to slight Thee, 
Naughi I ask beside Thee. 


These words so expressed Sebastian’s own feeling to 
the Lord Jesus that he naturally gave a special loveliness 
to this long cantata, founded on that chorale, and on the 
wonderful words he chose and arranged himself from the 
eighth chapter of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. 
Often, in our own home, the older children and I would 
sing portions of this music for our own delectation and joy. 
And when Sebastian would come in and sit down and 
listen to us with his head bent and his eyes shut, I used 
often to wonder what was in his mind—how his music 
sounded to him who had made it? To us it sounded 
perfect: to him, I imagine, from things he said now and 
again, there was much he could not get down on to the 
score—which was why he gave such careful time and 
thought, especially in his last years, to the revision of such 
of his music as he thought of most value. “We are only 
guessing at the music of Heaven,” he once said. But at 
least his guessing, so it seems to me was nearer to that 
fountain-head of music than any other we have in this 
world. Surely this may be said without hesitation or any 
doubt when we remember such a motett as “Sing to the 
Lord a new song, let the company of the Saints praise 
Him.” As indeed they do in that glorious and great music, 
which leaves all who hear it with open heart and ears in a 
state of wonder and happy awe—not at the marvellous 
musicianship, as shown in that fugue at the end of the 


[ 156 | 


Pra ke TS xX 


first movement, but at the spiritual power of Sebastian’s 
soul. 

I always felt that he showed this power in a wonderful 
degree in the music he wrote for the Organ. I heard him 
play this beloved instrument so much and so often, the 
music he wrote for it is so woven into all the history of 
my married life—my very first sight of him being at the 
Organ—that I cannot in any sufficient manner detach my 
heart from this matter so as to write of it in any order. 
Needless to say, some of his Organ music was dearer and 
more rejoiced in than others—some of the smaller things, 
like the exquisite Pastorale in F, and the Canzona in D 
minor and many of the chorale preludes from the “Little 
Organ Book,” which I knew with a special intimacy—but 
to me all his Organ music, when I listened to his playing of 
it, was wonderful. I seemed wrapped in great waves of 
noble beauty. And if sometimes I was puzzled and not 
specially moved by some new thing of his, I always found 
it was but my own dullness—I had but to hear it a few 
times and its lines of meaning and loveliness began to 
dawn upon me. The brilliant splendour of the Toccata 
and Fugue in D minor strikes all hearers at once, but not 
so easily the melancholy beauty and greatness of the 
fugue of the Dorian Toccata. And there are the great 
preludes and fugues in C major, A major, F minor, C 
minor, B minor and E flat, those in G major and G minor, 
and the wonderful Passacaglia. ‘There is a short Prelude 
and Fugue in E minor—not the little dear one I used to 
play myself{—which is very lovely. Could any heart fail to 
be moved by the ‘‘Waters of Babylon,” with its delicate 
sadness? Then that set of Organ chorales on “Gloria in 
excelsis Deo,” especially the trio and the quartet and the 
Angel’sSong. And the chorale preludes over which he was 


Bi becye) 


PART Sits 


working when he died, such glorious things as ‘Come, 
Holy Ghost,” “‘Come, Saviour of the Gentiles,” ‘Deck 
thyself, my soul, with gladness,” ““O Lamb of God all 
holy,”’ and the very last of all he ever wrote, the most 
beautiful, the most sad, “Before Thy Throne I come”— 
no, I find I cannot say anything worthy of Sebastian’s 
Organ music. It is all too full of the memory of the most 
beautiful part of my past happiness, too full of the inmost 
heart of Sebastian himself. To me it is impossible now to 
hear the Organ played by another hand than his—instead, 
I look at the score of his Organ music, and I remember. 
So far I have said no word of those tremendous works, 
Sebastian’s music to the Gospel narratives of our Lord’s 
Passion, of which those according to St. John and to St. 
Matthew are surely the greatest ever imagined, and his 
great setting of the Latin Mass in the key of B minor. I 
do not think there is much I can say fittingly. When I 
have heard them sung—and I have never heard the Mass 
entire, only portions of it—I have felt in a manner dumb 
and overwhelmed, as if a great sea had gone over me. The 
opening chorus of the Mass, the great cry of “Kyrie 
eleison!” and then the voices dropping into silence while 
the instruments make so beauteous a music till once more 
the voices come in with their weaving of melody, has 
always seemed to me beyond expression wonderful. Those 
who have not heard this music, and the music in the 
Gospel Passions, cannot understand what it is like, and 
nothing that anyone could say could help them to do so. 
Therefore words seem idle. The music came intensely 
from Sebastian’s heart: he wrote it with suffering, as he 
never could contemplate Christ’s wounds and death with- 
out suffering and a personal sense of sin. And from that 
pain of his came this beauty so poignant which he has 


[ 158 ] 


Baa SB eX 


given us, with which the Passion music is overflowing. 
Back to my mind comes that alto solo in the Passion 
according to St. John, “It is finished,” which I always 
felt of so singular a beauty and tenderness. The first 
time it was given in Holy Week in the year 1724, there 
was a boy in the choir with a really wonderful alto voice 
of a strange, vibrating quality, and when he sang this 
aria the combination of such music and such a voice 
simply made the tears start out of one’s eyes. 

The music to St. Matthew’s Gospel was not performed 
till the Good Friday five years later, and I think it was 
too big to be understood on a first hearing, for the people 
of Leipzig did not seem to care greatly for it, and there- 
fore, partly because it was very difficult and the choral 
resources at the Thomas Church during many of those 
years were not good, it was not given again till 1740, when 
Sebastian had altered it considerably, and then it was 
performed under his direction and seemed better appre- 
ciated—in a measure, perhaps, because Leipzig people 
were beginning to realize a little more by that time that 
they had a very great musician in their midst. One of the 
alterations that Sebastian made in this music was in 
transferring that glorious chorus, “O men bewail thy 
grievous sin,” from the opening of the St. John to the end 
of the first part of the St. Matthew Passion. One of the 
most beautiful, most touching and sad of the chorale 
preludes in the “Little Organ Book” is on that same 
theme. A device, very beautiful, which Sebastian uses in 
this Passion is that whenever Jesus speaks His voice is 
accompanied by the strings alone, so that He seems sur- 
rounded with a kiad of shimmer of light. The chorus 
which ends that work is surely amongst the greatest things 
that Sebastian ever brought forth—music before which 


[ 159 ] 


PARE) Slee 


the heart stands still, as it does before the ‘‘ Crucifixus” in 
his Mass, which always brought to my mind the sacred 
words, “‘ Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul 
also.””, When I looked at Sebastian’s blotted score of this 
“Crucifixus,” I would have known that sword had gone 
through him, even had I not heard the music. He, too, 
needed, as we all need, the comfort of the exquisite melody 
of that alto solo, ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,” 
and the peace of the closing chorus, “Dona Nobis 
Pacem.”’ Such music comes from the country of the soul 
where Sebastian always had his abiding place, despite the 
troubles of this life which at times were thick about him. 
The more fully I grew to an understanding of him and of 
his music, the more fully I knew this true. Ever before his 
mind was a vision towards which he reached: he could 
say with St. Paul, “Leaving those things which are behind 
I press towards the goal”—but his goal, like St. Paul’s, 
was not on this earth. 


[| 160 | 





. 


; 


PART VII 





PART VII 


I HAVE said little so far of that pupil of Sebastian’s, 
Johann Christoph Altnikol, who became our son by 
marrying our daughter Elisabeth. Hecame asa pupil five 
years before Sebastian’s death, and his modest and sweet 
nature, combined with his excellent musicianship, won not 
only Liessgen’s heart, but Sebastian’s and mine. He was as 
a son to us before he married our daughter. I had thought 
for some little time that Christoph was learning more than 
music in our house, and dear Liessgen’s little fears and 
blushes and shy withdrawings took me back over the space 
of years to the days when Sebastian’s footstep would send 
the blood to my cheeks and put my heart all out of time. 
And in spite of the years I will not say that my heart beat 
quite steadily when it heard that footstep of Sebastian’s 
(which I always could tell among a hundred others) re- 
turning to me after one of his absences at Dresden or 
elsewhere, but, thanks be to God, the absences were not 
many, so my heart had not too often an excuse to beat in 
an unruly manner. 

Liessgen was not much more than a year older than I 
was at my betrothal, when Christoph came to ask her of 
us. “Yes,” said Sebastian, ‘thou hast my glad consent 
and that of my wife, as I know without asking her. We 
willingly give our daughter to thy care and love.” Chris- 
toph stood before Sebastian, his head bent, his eyes suf- 
fused with happy tears, “‘ Master,” he said, “give me thy 


[ 163 ] 


PART. S EV BN 


blessing, that I may be able to make her happy and may 
not be unworthy to call myself thy son.” When he had 
gone to find his betrothed I went to Sebastian and he en- 
folded me with his arm and I wept upon his kind breast. 
“Tt reminds me so of the day thou first told me of thy 
love,” I whispered to him. ‘And was that a day so un- 
happy, Magdalenchen?”’ said he, lifting up my face to 
his with a tender, half-teasing little smile. A question I 
did hardly need to answer, as we stood there together, 
happy in our memories, happy in our daughter’s happiness. 

We had some months of pleasant preparation for the 
wedding, which took place in the New Year of 1740; 
Liessgen and I busy with the bridal linen and other 
household plenishings, while Sebastian gave his new son 
a good wedding gift in procuring for him the post of 
organist at Naumberg. Sebastian, without saying a word 
of his intention to Christoph, applied to the Council of 
Naumberg—they had earlier asked his skilful advice on 
the matter of repairs to their Organ—for the post for his 
“former beloved scholar,” who, so he told them, had 
“‘already had under his care an Organ for some time at 
Niederwiesa, and had a competent knowledge both how 
to play and how to manage it.” He also informed the 
Council that Altnikol was exceptionally skilled in com- 
position, in singing, and in playing the violin. So, at 
Sebastian’s request, the post of organist was bestowed 
upon him, and Sebastian had the pleasure of informing 
him of this good news. 

The night before the wedding we gave a little family 
performance of Sebastian’s Spring Cantata, which was 
written at Cothen many years earlier for another wedding. 
To me it has always been a special favourite among his 
cantatas, so fresh and delicious and full of all beautiful and 


[ 164 | 


PAkid)-S:B. Vv EN 


young things it seems. And there, side by side, were the 
betrothed lovers, at the dawn of another day to be husband 
and wife. lLiessgen so pretty and blushing, Christoph so 
quiet and content. And Sebastian at the clavichord accom- 
panied and directed the music he had composed, and kept 
the strings together, and when they sang 


No happier lot is given 

Than when by special grace of Heaven 
True love two souls together blendeth, 
On whom all bliss and joy atiendeth. 


they all looked with smiles upon the betrothed pair, but 
Sebastian and I looked at each other. 

And then at Sebastian’s suggestion we sung his setting 
from the Schemelli Book of— 


O Jesu, meek; O Jesu, mild, 
The Father’s will Thou hast fulfilled. 
Come down to me from Heaven so high, 
Become like us, who to Thee cry, 

O Jesu, meek; O Jesu, mild. 


That bridal eve, with all the family gathered round 
Sebastian, singing and playing the pure and heavenly music 
that had come from his heart, remains more brightly in my 
mind than all the wedding rejoicings of the next day, 
happy though they were. And then we kissed our sweet 
daughter and Christoph took her away with him through 
the snow to Naumberg, where before Christmas had come 
round again, God blessed their union with a little son 
whom it hardly needs telling they christened Johann 
Sebastian, as a year earlier Emanuel had christened the 
second son born to him in Berlin. 


[ 165 ] 


PART SEVEN 


And so were Sebastian and I become grandparents, 
which to me seemed somewhat strange, by reason of the 
fact that my own betrothal and marriage has always re- 
mained so fresh and near to me, in spite of all the years 
and all the children. And this first marriage of a daughter 
—and I may most probably not live to see a second one, as 
Sebastian did not—seemed to put back time for me and 
give me again in 1749 those blessed years of 1722 and 
1723, so that even when I looked in my little mirror I 
almost thought to see again the countenance I then wore. 
But better that the face should age than the love. Sebas- 
tian’s face I looked upon so constantly that all its changes 
from the countenance I first beheld at St. Katharine’s in 
Hamburg, had come imperceptibly upon me, and it was 
only by conscious recollection and remembrance that I 
perceived how time had dealt with him. In the year of 
Liessgen’s marriage he was sixty-four years old, and his 
countenance in respose (his smile had a wonderful mellow- 
ing effect) was rather stern, even alarming to those who 
did not know the goodness that lay behind it. All the lines 
of his face were greatly deepened and accentuated, the set 
of his mouth much grimmer, with a deep line going 
downwards towards his chin, and the frown between his 
thick eyebrows much more marked—but it was not anger 
made that frown, as the effort to see, for his eyes, which 
he had sadly strained in his youth and used so constantly 
and closely all his life over music scores, failed him more 
and more as he grew older. The beautiful open look they 
had when I first knew him was gone, and they gazed out 
upon the world from lids drawn close together in the ef- 
fort to focus visionary objects. I think the first impression 
Sebastian, in these last years, would make upon a stranger 
beholding him, would have been of a certain severity and 


[ 166 | 


PART SEVEN 


sternness, as of aman to be somewhat feared. But that im- 
pression would only last as he came into the room and 
stood a moment looking at his visitor, his big head a little 
dropped, his eyes peering in a slightly puzzled way that 
looked a little grim—but the minute he spoke and smiled, 
the goodness and the kindness and the gentleness in which 
we, his family, all sheltered as under the shade of a great . 
rock, would come forth and make others understand why 
his children and his wife and his pupils all so loved him. 
Us he let see his heart, so tender and religious, but he did 
not give that to the world, and there were people in 
plenty who had no liking for him, and did not hesitate to 
write and say things about him neither kind nor true. 
There was a deal of jealousy in Leipzig in Sebastian’s 
time, and controversies and quarrels, of which he took not 
much notice, though he was sufficiently annoyed by Herr 
Scheibe’s untrue statements about him to request his 
friend, Magister Birnbaum, to answer for him in the 
public print, as he had neither time nor inclination to 
leave his music in order to do so himself. He was not in- 
terested in writing about himself, and entirely refused to 
Herr Mattheson the biographical details he requested for 
his Dictionary of Musicians, which he called “A Founda- 
tion for a Gate of Honour, wherein shall appear the Lives, 
Works, and Merits of the most excellent Capellmeisters, 
Composers, Writers upon Music and Performing Artists.” 
This, I confess, I regretted, as [ would have liked to see 
the history of my husband printed in that book. But in his 
last years he drew even more into himself and into the 
circle of his home. He felt he had yet some music to write, 
and not much time, perhaps, left him in which to do it. 
*“My dear,” he said to me once, “‘‘Old Bach,’ as the 
Thomaner boys call him, has not many years left in which 


[ 167 ] 


PART SEVEN 


to write his music, and he must not waste them on outside 
things.” He even refused for some time to join Mizler’s 
Society for Musical Science, partly because if he became 
a member he had to have his portrait painted in oils to 
present to the Society. However, in the end he yielded to 
Mizler’s persuasions, had the portrait painted—and a very 
good one it was—and wrote a triple canon in six parts, and 
variations upon “‘Vom Himmel hoch,” to present to the 
Society, which were afterwards engraved. Lorenz Mizler, 
the founder of this Society, had been for a time Sebastian’s 
pupil, and he said, in a public dissertation shortly before 
leaving Leipzig, ‘“‘I have derived great benefit, most 
famous Bach, from your instructions in the art and practice 
of music, and lament that I can no longer enjoy them.” 
Mizler was clever in many ways, but Sebastian had never 
a very high consideration for him, he was too vain, too 
satisfied with himself—‘“In spite of his brains, but a 
shallow fellow,” said Sebastian. Which was perhaps one 
reason why he delayed so long before he would become a 
member of the Society of the Musical Sciences. 

Within himself, Sebastian had all the musical science he 
needed, acquired by a lifetime of patient and unending 
study. He gained knowledge from every piece of music 
that came under his hands, and he never disdained to 
learn and profit from the works of composers of infinitely 
less merit than himself. He always had the greatest pleasure 
in seeing and hearing what others had done, and no youth- 
ful musician ever had to fear intolerance or contempt from 
him, though, when the need was, his corrections could be 
severe enough. Sometimes he would be asked to write a 
simple piece for the clavier, for those whose skill was not 
great, and he would answer pleasantly, “I will see what 
I can do.” He would take an easy theme, but, on his 


[ 168 | 


PART SEVEN 


beginning to develop it, so much crowded into his mind to 
say, that the piece soon ceased to be simple. When this was 
discovered to him he would say, with his kind, half- 
quizzical smile, ‘‘ Practise it diligently, and you will find 
it quite easy.” 

At this time of his life, Sebastian had reached the 
height of his fame. He did not go about, but musicians of 
all kinds and countries came continually to his door, and 
he welcomed them with cordial interest and a desire to 
help and please them. Emanuel was in the service of the 
King of Prussia, at Berlin, and the King, himself so 
devoted to the art of music, began to express to his clave- 
cinist a desire to see and hear his celebrated father, the 
Cantor of Leipzig. Emanuel conveyed this august wish 
to Sebastian, who was gratified by this royal condescension, 
but very disinclined for the journey to Berlin and all the 
publicity and ceremony. However, as the King became 
more insistent, it became plain that the journey would 
have to be adventured, so at last he set out, taking his 
journey by way of Halle, where Friedemann joined him, 
and arrived at Potsdam on a Sunday evening, going to 
Emanuel’s lodging. But he had no sooner arrived there, 
all tired and travel-stained, when he was summoned im- 
mediately to the King’s presence, and not even given time 
to change his travelling dress for his black Cantor’s gown. 
The King, ever impatient, had waited so long as he was 
inclined to see him, and would not wait even the half of an 
hour longer. It appeared that the usual evening concert 
was about to commence, the King had his flute in his 
hand, the orchestra was waiting, when the list of strangers 
arrived was presented to His Majesty. He glanced down 
the list, and then, laying his flute down, turned to the 
assembled musicians and said, with some excitement, 


[ 169 | 


PART SEVEN 


“Gentlemen, old Bach is come!’’—and so he was at once 
sent for. Sebastian, rather agitated and weary, was ushered 
into the King’s presence, into the brilliant room and com- 
pany—he told me, on his return, how splendid and royal 
the Palace was, the concert-room was ornamented with 
great mirrors and with sculpture, part gilt and part of the 
most beautiful green varnish, the music-desk for His 
Majesty’s use was of tortoiseshell, most elegantly and 
richly inlaid with silver, while he also saw a wonderful 
harpsichord with pedals and frame of silver, a case inlaid 
and a front of the same costly shell as the King’s music- 
desk. Sebastian made his apologies for the negligent state 
of his dress—some of the smart Court ladies and gentle- 
men began to smile and make remarks on his appearance, 
not being in the latest Berlin fashion, but the King, as 
Friedemann told me, reduced them to silence with a 
glance, and treated Sebastian with a marked courtesy and 
consideration. The King himself was a musician and a 
lover of music, and, therefore, he recognized Sebastian’s 
greatness and did not judge him by the unfashionable cut 
of hiscoat. The royal flute concerto was put aside for that 
evening, and the King gave himself to the pleasure of 
listening to his visitor, instead of performing himself. He 
led Sebastian through the rooms of the Palace, and showed 
him the seven forte-pianos by Silbermann, of which he was 
possessed, and begged him to do himself and the members 
of his Court the pleasure of letting them hear him play 
upon these instruments. So Sebastian sat himself down 
and made music, and perhaps some of those who heard 
him realized that there were two kings in the Palace that 
night. When Sebastian had played upon all the Silbermann 
hammer-claviers, he begged the King to give him a fugue 
subject on which to extemporize. So His Majesty gave 


[ 170 ] 


PART SEVEN 


him a subject, and Sebastian proceeded to develop it in 
his own learned and incomparable manner, to the great 
astonishment and admiration of the King. 

The next day Sebastian played on the Organ in the 
Church of the Holy Ghost, before a large and admiring 
company of people, and in the evening he was again 
commanded to Potsdam, and the King asked to hear a 
fugue in six parts, that he might learn how far polyphonic 
treatment could be carried. The subject of this fugue 
Sebastian chose this time himself, as every theme is not 
suitable for so full a working out, and produced a fugue 
which filled the King with amazement and delight, so that 
he became quite excited and cried out several times, 
“There is only one Bach! there is only one Bach!” 

After this agreeable visit to Potsdam, Sebastian went to 
Berlin and visited the newly-builded Opera House, where 
he discovered by his musical intuition, not by experience, 
the curious acoustic properties of the dining-room attached 
to it, as I have already told. 

On his return home—and how proud I was to welcome 
him and hear his quiet tale of how the King of Prussia had 
received him and talked to him and praised his music— 
he set to work on a more complete and polished working 
out of the royal fugue subject, in a fugue in three parts and 
a six-part fugue, eight canons, a fugue with an answer on 
the fifth in canon form, a sonata in four movements, and 
a two-part canon over a basso continuo—all these based, 
more or less, on the King’s theme. This work he called 
“The Musical Offering,” and spent much time and 
pleasure in adorning with little ingenuities, as above the 
fourth canon he inscribed the words “‘ Notulis crescentibus 
crescat fortuna Regis,’ which, so he explained to me, 
meant ‘‘As the notes increase in value, so may the fortune 


eye 


PART SEVEN 


of the King increase’’; and over the fifth canon he wrote 
“‘Ascendenteque Modulatione ascendat Gloria Regis” — 
‘And with the rising modulation may the glory of the 
King rise.’ This work he had engraved and he presented 
it to King Frederick with a dedicatory letter, which I here 
copy out:— 

Most Gracious King, 

I hereby most humbly dedicate to your Majesty a 
Musical Offering, the noblest part of which proceeds from 
your Majesty’sillustrious hand. I remember, with respectful 
gratification, the very special Royal grace vouchsafed to 
me by your Majesty on my visit to Potsdam some tume 
since, when your Majesty deigned with your own hand to 
play a theme for a fugue on the claver, and at the same 
time graciously deigned to command me to work it out at 
once in your Illustrious Presence. Itwas my humble duty 
to obey your Majesty’s order. But I soon found that owmg 
to lack of preparation the performance was not doing 
justice to so fine a theme. Consequently I decided, and 
promptly resolved, to work out this truly Royal theme m a 
more adequate manner, and then to make it known to the 
world. I have now accomplished this work to the best of my 
ability, with the sole and irreproachable purpose of magni- 
fying, though in a small way, the fame of a King whose 
greatness and power in all Arts of War and Peace, and 
especially in that of Music, are universally admired and 
revered. I venture to ask one humble petition, namely, that 
your Majesty will receive this small work with gracious 
favour, and may graciously consent to show further favour 
to your Majesty’s 

most obedient, humble servant, 
The Author. 
Leipzig, July 7, 1747. 


[ 172 ] 


Pra heh So VEN 


The first portion of the “Musical Offering””—for it was 
not all finished at once—in the copy that was presented to 
the King of Prussia, was beautifully engraved on thick 
paper and bound in leather with gold enrichments, and 
the whole business of writing it and working out all his 
variations on the royal theme gave Sebastian peculiar 
pleasure. In compliment to the King, who was, moreover, 
so excellent a performer on the flute, the fugue in canon 
style is written for clavier and flute, while the sonata and 
the final canon are scored for clavier, flute and violin. The 
two first fugues are for clavier alone, while some of the 
other pieces are for stringed instruments. The “Musical 
Offering” is a work of much beauty and interest, and 
worthy to be offered by such a musician as Sebastian to a 
King who was also a musician. 

Following on this, and partly growing out of it, Sebas- 
tian wrote his incomparable ‘‘Art of Fugue’—a noble 
crown to his musical life as the particular master of fugue. 
It is a deeply learned work, which I am in no manner com- 
petent to explain or discourse upon. But I have listened 
to Sebastian and musical friends of his discussing it, and 
from what I heard in this way gained some idea of its mean- 
ing and value. One of his admirers called it ‘this practical 
and splendid work, this treasure,’’ and another said, 
“This ‘Art of Fugue’ is too lofty for the great world.” 
In truth, it was so deeply learned that it took a very skilled 
musician to appreciate all the accumulation of knowledge, 
genius and inspiration that Sebastian had put into his 
“Art of Fugue’’—the very apex of his great achievements 
in the creation of this form of music. ‘The tone and feeling 
of the whole work is grave and devotional—so, indeed, had 
Sebastian been all his life, but as he approached his end, 
this deeply-rooted character in him became more apparent 


[ 173 | 


PART SEVEN 


to us all. He sometimes quoted to us Luther’s saying, 
‘Music is the best solace, by it the heart is refreshed and 
settled again in peace,” and no one ever proved this truth 
more fully than he did. He was engaged upon the “Art 
of Fugue” at the time of his death, and the greater part of 
it had been engraved under his own supervision when 
death put an end to his works in this world. The “Art of 
Fugue” was published, but owing to a regrettable care- 
lessness and confusion on the part of those responsible for 
it, unfinished things were put in, including an incomplete 
and very lengthy and splendid fugue for the clavier, which 
had really no connection with the “Art of Fugue” as 
planned by Sebastian, upon which he was working when 
he died. This fugue is a wonderful one, and particularly 
interesting as Sebastian had made the curious discovery 
that the letters of his name, Bach, were melodic in their 
arrangement—which, indeed, we might all have dis- 
covered had we but thought what that name stood for in 
music. He used this sequence of notes in the last of the 
three themes in this fugue, but time was not given him to 
complete this splendid thing. 

And so, engaged upon this contrapuntal work, upon the 
letters of the name Bach—-so long, for so many centuries, 
linked with music and coming to so great a flowering in 
him—Sebastian wrote this fugue, which was to be his last 
contribution to the art he loved with his whole heart and 
being: his last work except one other, and that, as was 
fitting, was written for his beloved instrument, the Organ, 
to which he had ever gone to express his intimate and 
religious self, in which culminated all those qualities in 
him which put him ever apart, as I do feel, with humble 
but deep conviction, apart from all other musicians as one 
who had in a particular manner the seal of God upon him. 


[ 174 ] 


PART SEVEN 


His work in music he had done all his life with the utmost 
of his strength and will. To music he had given his life, 
without any faltering or turning backwards, from the days 
of his childhood in Eisenach, and in the end music cost 
him his eyesight. He had strained his eyes from the time 
of his boyhood in the constant copying out of music, 
apart from the masses of music of his own composing 
which he wrote down. He constantly worked late into the 
night by the light of candles, in spite of the fact that often 
he complained of pain in his eyes—I spared him all I 
could by helping him in the copying of music, and I 
taught his children to do the same, and also his pupils lent 
their hands and eyes. But we none of us could write the 
music for him that only existed in his own brain. And so 
his eyes grew worse, so that when they were specially bad I 
would have the grief of seeing him feel with his hand for 
the lintel of the door as he came in or out, or for his chair 
ere he sat himself down uponit. Yet he would but call for 
more candles if he wished to write music, as if the multi- 
plication of illumination would compensate for the in- 
creasing dimness of his vision. ‘‘I must write while I can 
see, Magdalena,” he would say to me when I would ven- 
ture sometimes to lay a hand of remonstrance upon his 
shoulder, raising his narrowed, suffering eyes to me. I[ 
knew, though he never said so, that the thought of blind- 
ness was more cruel to him by far, than the thought of 
going to his grave. And there was nothing I could do, save 
go away and weep a little and wish the blindness might be 
mine, for I had no music within me to write, as he had. 
Then came, as we thought, a fresh hope in this tribu- 
lation. There visited Leipzig a famous English surgeon, 
of great reputation in his own country for his success in 
operating on cases like Sebastian’s. His name was Herr 


[ 175 ] 


PART SEVEN 


Johann Taylor, and friends came to us at once, urging 
that Sebastian should take advantage of his skill and sub- 
mit to an operation which would restore his sight to its 
old usefulness. At first he was reluctant; the expense, the 
risk that no good might result, made him hesitate. But 
everyone urged him so—I did not, I am thankful to re- 
member, I felt that it was for him alone to decide, and I did 
not like that word operation in connection with the 
eyes, which are so delicate a gift of God—and they pointed 
out that the presence of Herr Taylor in Leipzig was a 
golden opportunity which should not be missed. So 
Sebastian yielded to what seemed good advice, and Herr 
Taylor promised him the most satisfactory results. 

On a day Herr Taylor came with his instruments and 
did things to my Sebastian’s eyes—Sebastian said no 
word, but I saw the knuckles of his hands clasped together, 
whiten, and I felt as though my heart had been squeezed 
inavice. ‘Then he had bandages over his eyes and had to 
be led about. When the bandages were taken off his eyes 
were no better, but worse, and that man, Taylor, said 
another operation would be necessary, and it was done, 
and in the result Sebastian, who could before see a little, 
was then blind. O God, the anguish of it is on me again. 
And Sebastian, when this dreaded calamity had come 
upon him, was so patient. When we found that he was 
blind I failed to be calm like him and wept against his 
bed. He laid his hand upon my neck, “‘I think we should 
all be glad to suffer a little,” he said, “it brings us a little 
closer to our Lord, Who suffered all things for our sakes.” 
And after a little while he asked me to get and read to him 
out of Master Tauler’s Book of Sermons, the second ser- 
mon for Epiphany, in which comes this passage that he 
remembered in past reading, and wished to hear again for 


[ 176 | 


PART SEVEN 


the better consolation of us both: “That my eyes are 
now in my head, is as God our Heavenly Father has seen 
it from eternity; now let them be put out, and let me 
become blind, or deaf, this also has our Heavenly Father 
foreseen from eternity, that it ought to come to pass, and 
had His eternal counsel with respect unto it, and deter- 
minded it from eternity with Himself. Ought I not, then, 
to open my inward eyes and ears, and thank my God that 
His eternal counsel is fulfilled in me? Ought I to grieve 
at it? I ought to be wonderfully thankful for it! And so 
also with loss of friends, or property, or reputation, or 
comfort, or whatever it be that God allots to us, it will all 
serve to prepare thee, and help thee forward to true peace, 
if thou canst only take it so.” 

Sebastian suffered more than the loss of his sight, for 
they treated him with such powerful drugs and bleedings, 
all of which I suppose were necessary, that his strong 
health was broken down, and though he lived for some 
more months he was never well again. 

But a great and deep serenity came to him in these last 
weeks of living. Death had never been a dread to him, but 
a hope to which he looked unfaltering all his life—it was, 
to his mind, the true consummation of all living. Always in 
his music he expressed this: he never wrote such beautiful 
melody in the cantatas as when the words expressed the 
thought of death, of release from this world. ‘Those who 
are without genius cannot understand what it must be like, 
and how daily life must seem a fettering of its powers. I 
did not fully realize this at the time Sebastian was alive, I 
fear, for he never said anything of it, and we were so happy 
together, and he was always so busy and full of work. But 
underneath I knew, I had glimpses, that to him the best 
hope of living was to die and to go to the Saviour Whom 


[177 ] 


Poa RT Ss: Riven 


he loved so deeply. He, more fully than anyone I have 
known, realized the beauty and the truth of these words 
of Luther’s: “Wilt thou go surely and meet and grasp 
God rightly, so finding grace and help in Him, be not 
persuaded to seek Him elsewhere than in the Lord Christ. 
Let thine art and study begin with Christ, and there let it 
stay and cling.” 

This desire for death in Sebastian, as I have said, 
frightened and distressed me in my youth, and I did not 
think of it if it could be helped. But since his death, when 
my time is so often given to pondering on his ways and 
words and recalling the past time, I have begun to see that 
death to him was a release into a larger freedom, where 
those powers that here could not fully express themselves 
would expand in the heavenly air of the mansions of God. 

In one of his cantatas he himself adapted some words 
of Neumeister’s and set them to music which expressed his 
longing— 


Welcome ! will I say 
When Death shall come for me. 


And then in another cantata what a sad and lovely 
melody he made for the words, 


O Christ, my all im living, 
Dying brings me reward. 
What joy to end the striving 
And come to Thee, my Lord ! 


which goes on to that chorale, so haunting, so piercing in 
its loveliness, that even when he was living I could rarely 
hear it without tears coming to my eyes: 


[ 178 ] 


FART SEVEN 


From Heaven a song 1s falling, tts music greets mine ear, 
From Heaven are angels calling, their welcome soundeth 
near. 


And then the tenor sings: 


How comforting 1s now the thought of thee, 
O happy Death, the end of all my woes, to all desire thou 
bringest rest. 

I long for thee, with eager heart do I embrace thee; thou 
art no foe, but deliverer kind. 

Then toll for me soon, ah, toll for me soon, thou most be- 
loved of holy bells. 

Come soon, ah, call for me soon, voice of my ransom. 

Come! Come! I raise my hand to greet thee, 

Come, take me from my sorrow, take me, thou long desired 
day of death. | 


The words were not Sebastian’s but the music was, and 
in it he expressed his deep and secret heart. 

Ah, my great one! now is he gone to make music 
before our Lord God in Heaven. 

But in his last months of life in this world, even blind- 
ness did not stay Sebastian working to the end upon his 
music, with the aid of his old pupil and son-in-law, Chris- 
toph Altnikol, and a younger and newer pupil, Johann 
Gottfried Miithel, who was living in the house with us at 
this time. He was stricken, but he was not idle—he never 
had been idle—and he wasted none of the little time yet 
left to him. He was in the midst of revising his eighteen 
great chorals for the Organ, when his last strength gave 
way—the heat of the July days had greatly tried him— 
and in pain and weakness he had to yield himself to his 


[ 179 ] 


PART SEVEN 


bed, to his death-bed. With what acuteness of memory 
those last days, those last hours, return uponme! He had 
suffered so much for several days, and three nights I had 
sat with him, for to suffer and to be in the dark, to see 
nothing—we, with our sight, can little know what that 
must be like. Then, mercifully, the good God sent him a 
little space of ease. He said that he could sleep, and be- 
sought me to go and rest. He passed his dear hands over 
my face, saying, “I feel how weary thou art, go and sleep 
for my sake.” 

So for a little while I left him and went to lie down in 
another chamber. Our dear son-in-law, Christoph (for 
neither Friedemann nor Emanuel was at home) pro- 
mised to keep watch with him. He told me later that 
Sebastian, after lying very still for about the space of an 
hour, so that he thought him sleeping, suddenly raised 
himself up in bed, and said, ‘‘Christoph, get some paper, 
there is music in my head I want thee to set down for me.” 
So hurriedly fetching paper and a quill and ink-horn, 
Christoph sat him at Sebastian’s side and wrote as he told 
him. After he had dictated the last note, Sebastian laid 
himself down with a sigh, and said, so low that Christoph 
only just caught the words, “That is the last music I shall 
make in this world.” And then he fell asleep for some 
hours, all his suffering dropped from him. 

When I came in at the early sunrise, Christoph showed 
me the score and told me what had happened. “Look at 
it,” he said, “see how beautiful it is: ‘Before Thy Throne 
I stand’—1t is his soul struggling through pain and dim- 
ness, and then the lovely, serene melody coming in like 
dawn after darkness, and swelling to that heavenly end.” 

But I could hardly see the score for tears—I looked at 
Sebastian’s face as it lay upon the pillow, at the music, 


[ 180 ] 


PoAsk TS E-VloE’ N 


and I felt it was his last, the song they say the dying swan 
sings at the end. I went to the window, pulled aside the 
curtain a little and watched the rising sun colour the sky, 
quietening my weeping lest it should awaken him from 
that peaceful and blessed sleep. I do not know how long 
I stood there in a kind of maze of misery and glory. But 
after a while I heard his voice, “‘ Magdalena, beloved one, 
come tome.” I turned, startled, there was such a strange 
thrill in the sound of his speaking. Christoph had gone, I 
was alone with him. I ran to the bed, his eyes were open, 
he was looking at me—he saw me! Those eyes so shrunken 
and drawn together by suffering and the effort to see were 
once more open and had a piteous brightness. It was God’s 
last gift to him, the return of his sight, just at the end. He 
looked once more on the sun, on his children, on me, on 
his little grandson, whom Liessgen had brought, who bore 
hisname. I carried a red, sweet rose to him, he feasted his 
eyes on the rich colour: “But,” he said, “there are 
better things where I am going, Magdalena, lovelier 
colours, music you and I have only dreamed of, never 
heard—and the Lord Himself!” 

He lay still, holding my hand within his own, seeing the 
Vision which had always been the light of his life—the 
Vision of his Lord and his God Whom he had served so 
faithfully in his music. 

Soon after this little interval of blessing, it was plain 
the end could not be far. ‘‘Sing me some music,” he said 
to us as we knelt round his bed, “‘Sing me some good song 
about death, for it is now my hour for dying.” For a 
troubled moment I hesitated what we should sing, the last 
earthly music that was to sound in his ears, so soon to hear 
the Heavenly. Then God gave me the right thought and 
I began that cantional, ‘‘Hark! a voice saith, all are 


[ 18x | 


PART SEVEN 


mortal,” on which he made so beautiful and touching a 
chorale prelude in the Little Organ Book, and the others 
joined in till we had the four parts complete. As wesang a 
look of great peace came over my Sebastian’s face. He was 
already past the troubles of this world. 

It was on the evening of Tuesday, at a quarter to nine 
o'clock, the 29th day of July, in the year 1750, that he 
died. He was sixty-five years of age. On Friday morning 
early he was buried at the Church of St. John, in Leipzig. 
The Pastor said from the pulpit these words: ‘The very 
worthy and venerable Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, Hof- 
componist to his Kingly Majesty of Poland and Electoral 
and Serene Highness of Saxony, Capellmeister to his 
Highness the Prince of Anhalt-Céthen, and Cantor to the 
Schule of St. Thomas’s in this town, having fallen calmly 
and blessedly asleep in God in St. Thomas’s Churchyard, 
his body has this day, according to Christian usage, been 
consigned to the earth.” 

But more than any words of the preacher, in my heart 
were the words of that chorale for which Sebastian had 
made the music on his death-bed. 


Before Thy Throne, my God, I stand, 
Myself, my all, are in Thy hand; 
Turn to me Thine approving face, 
Nor from me now withhold Thy grace. 


And thus I have come to the end of the story of the life 
of Johann Sebastian Bach. The task which Caspar Burg- 
holt in the first place set before me of telling, as clearly as 
I might remember, the history of his life and works—the 
doing of this has been a singular comfort to me for many 
months—is now finished. Because it is finished I feel as if 


[182] 


Uy A OPS BE 8 OF ER Oa 


my own life had come to its close. There is no further 
reason for living: my real life came to an end on the day 
Sebastian died, and I pray daily that in His mercy the 
good God will take me away from this place of shadows, 
and let me once more be with my Sebastian, who, ever 
since I first loved him, has been my all of good. The time is 
long away from him. 


[ 183 ] 





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